The Unsung Heroes of the "Vaccine Thanks" that the Jersey Journal Forgot

The Jersey Journal ran a refreshing editorial titled Vaccine thanks -- for those who make ‘em, take ‘em and give ‘em out. The Journal opines:

What a difference a year makes.

Last Thanksgiving, most of us were hunkered down with just the members of our immediate household while phone calls, text messages, emails, FaceTime and Zoom helped us count our blessings with extended family and friends without risking a COVID super-spreader event.

Within weeks, vaccines started to get into arms and each month more and more people became eligible and rolled up their sleeves – and for that we are very, very thankful today.

The Journal offers Thanksgiving thanks to: 

• The scientists who developed the vaccines and who continue to develop increasingly effective treatments against COVID-19.

• The Trump and Biden administrations for fast-tracking vaccine production and distribution.

• The healthcare and administrative workers who get the shots into our arms.

• And each and every person who has been vaccinated.

What’s missing from this list? The elephant in the room—the pharmaceutical companies.

Business corporations are the institutions that organize the factors of production, make the crucial decisions, do the planning, provide the industrial facilities, and figure out how to get products into the hands of consumers. Business is the crucial link between the laboratories of the scientists and inventors and the useful products available to the end users in the market. The thinking, planning, and decision-making work of the management, and the investors who put up the financial capital, are crucial to the vaccine success story. In a time when the most overused word in the English language is “hero”, the Pharmaceutical companies are the unsung genuine heroes that the Jersey Journal’s vaunted thankfulness overlooks. 

“Big Pharma” should be prominently second on the list getting thanks. Profit-seeking business corporations are the unsung heroes not just of the pandemic but of the standards of living we enjoy, from the food we consume to the ability to make phone calls, text messages, emails, FaceTime and Zoom that we depended so much upon before the vaccines came along. It’s not that these others on the Journal’s list are not important to the productive process. It’s that without the commercialization services that business provides, there would be no one else to thank. Without these innovators, specifically the pharmaceutical companies—which, by the way, employ over 300,000 people in NJ—there would have been nothing for Trump and Biden to “fast-track” (relax obstructive government regulations of), and the vaccines would never have left the scientists’ labs, been produced by the hundreds of millions of doses, and gotten into the hands of the healthcare and administrative workers, let alone “our arms.” Imagine the $trillions of dollars in economic activity that would never have happened, the countless jobs that would not have come back, and the millions more who would have died, without Big Pharma.

So let me complete the Jersey Journal’s thank-you list. Thanksgiving thanks to the unsung heroes of the vaccine success story, the pharmaceutical companies who continue to make it possible to fight the pandemic.

Related Reading:

Menendez opposes fellow N.J. Democrat Pallone’s plan to lower drug prices By Jonathan D. Salant | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Pfizer Will Earn Billions in Profits from the Vaccines. It Should Be Much, Much More. by Scott Lincicome for The Dispatch

Without “Big Pharma,” Government Research Would Be Useless

Pharma Shouldn’t Apologize to Useless Do Gooders for their Life-Saving Vaccines

Basic Cancer Research Funding: Don’t Forget Pharma

A Thanksgiving Message

 [This year I want to express my thankfulness for the "climate deniers." These unjustly smeared climate thinkers are addressing climate change from a humanist perspective. They actually consider the facts, consider them rationally, and draw logical conclusions about climate and human fourishing. They have assembled a monumental body of fact-oriented work showing that the climate catastrophe scenario peddled by leading politicians, crony businesses, Environmentalists, and much of the media is fraud. The basis of the catastrophe movement is that any human impact on the raw nature is by that very fact immoral, including man's impact on the climate, regardless of the benefits to human well-being.

[The "demiers" hold a different perspective that prioritizes human well-being—humanism—at the moral center. And it yields different logical conclusions. This view is backed up by extensive research, including much of the same source material that the catastrophists use (and misuse). But the "deniers"—dissenters from the mainstream dogma—read the data to show that, from a human, rather than Environmentalist, perspective, that climate change has both positive and negative influences, is mild and manageable, and has coincided with the best climate for human life ever. True, the dissenters acknowledge, climate change can cause serious problems in the future. 

[But it is here that the principle "First, do no harm" must be honored. The catastrophists' moral premises demand immediate cutbacks  and elimination of reliable energy, industrial development, technological innovation, freedom of markets to avoid the chimera of a climate "crisis"—a cognitively useless phrase if there ever was one. To the catastrophists, human impact is not causing the crisis; human impact is the crisis, and must e stopped at all costs to man, however bad. To deal with any negatives resulting from man's impact on the climate, the dissenters want to preserve man's access to reliable energy, industrial development, technological innovation, freedom of markets, adapt where necessary, mitigate where possible, and be sure not to damage human progress in quality of life.

[To any followers of the climate catastrophist hustlers, ask yourself , Why do your leaders demonize dissenters as deniers. Why do they want to discourage you from familiarizing yourselves with the pro-human view? What are the deniers saying that the catastrophist thought leaders don't want you to know? Here is a list of some of the "deniers" and energy experts, whose thoughts any objective person must consider:   

Richard Lindzen, Naomi Seibt, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger (On Behalf Of Environmentalists, I Apologize For The Climate Scare), Judith Curry, Patrick Moore (ex-Greenpeace founder), Willam Happer, Roger Pielke Jr., Ronald Bailey, Steven E.Koonin, Ross McKittrick, Paul C. Knappenberger, Patrick J. Michaels,  Robert Balling Jr., Alex Epstein (Fossil Future), Freeman Dyson, John Christy, and many others.]

To these "climate deniers"—Thank you for your tireless effort to counter the climate catastrophist religion with honesty, realism, and humanism.  

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That said, reprinted below are two thanksgiving messages that I think captures the true essence of Thanksgiving, a holiday practiced only in America. Regardless of how one believes he came into existence (God or nature), the reality is that man is a being of self-generated wealth based on reason who requires certain social conditions for his survival. America was the first country founded explicitly on those conditions; i.e., a country where every individual owns his own life and possesses inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and to the pursuit of his own happiness, coupled inextricably with the obligation to accept the reality that all people are equally endowed with these rights and to treat them accordingly.

It is thus that America, born of the Enlightenment ideas of reason, individualism, reason, free markets, and republican government, achieved in the span of a mere two hundred-plus years (following centuries of stagnation) its spectacular standard of living. The ensuing excerpts are from two essays that I believe correctly recognize where the credit for America's material plenty belongs: to any man or woman, on whatever level of ability or accomplishment, who contributed in a great or small way to American greatness by doing an honest and productive day's work in pursuit of his or her own well-being.

Thanksgiving: A Most Selfish Holiday by Debi Ghate

Ah, Thanksgiving. To most of us, the word conjures up images of turkey dinner, pumpkin pie and watching football with family and friends. It kicks off the holiday season and is the biggest shopping weekend of the year. We're taught that Thanksgiving came about when pilgrims gave thanks to God for a bountiful harvest. We vaguely mumble thanks for the food on our table, the roof over our head and the loved ones around us. We casually think about how lucky we are and how much better our lives are than, say, those in Bangladesh. But surely there is something more to celebrate, something more sacred about this holiday.

What should we really be celebrating on Thanksgiving?

Ayn Rand described Thanksgiving as "a typically American holiday . . . its essential, secular meaning is a celebration of successful production. It is a producers' holiday. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production." She was right.

What is today's version of the "bountiful harvest"? It's the affluence and success we've gained. It's the cars, houses and vacations we enjoy. It's the life-saving medicines we rely on, the stock portfolios we build, the beautiful clothes we buy and the safe, clean streets we live on. It's the good life.

How did we get this "bountiful harvest"? Ask any hard-working American; it sure wasn't by the "grace of God." It didn't grow on a fabled "money tree." We created it by working hard, by desiring the best money can buy and by wanting excellence for ourselves and our loved ones. What we don't create ourselves, we trade value for value with those who have the goods and services we need, such as our stockbrokers, hairdressers and doctors. We alone are responsible for our wealth. We are the producers and Thanksgiving is our holiday.

So, on Thanksgiving, why don't we thank ourselves and those producers who make the good life possible?

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to recognize what we are truly grateful for, to appreciate and celebrate the fruits of our labor: our wealth, health, relationships and material things--all the values we most selfishly cherish. We should thank researchers who have made certain cancers beatable, gourmet chefs at our favorite restaurants, authors whose books made us rethink our lives, financiers who developed revolutionary investment strategies and entrepreneurs who created fabulous online stores. We should thank ourselves and those individuals who make our lives more comfortable and enjoyable--those who help us live the much-coveted American dream.

As you sit down to your decadent Thanksgiving dinner served on your best china, think of all the talented individuals whose innovation and inventiveness made possible the products you are enjoying. As you look around at who you've chosen to spend your day with--those you've chosen to love--thank yourself for everything you have done to make this moment possible. It's a time to selfishly and proudly say: "I earned this."

Debi Ghate is associated with the Ayn Rand Institute.

This Thanksgiving, Don't Say Grace, Say Justice by Craig Biddle

The religious tradition of saying grace before meals becomes especially popular around the holidays, when we all are reminded of how fortunate we are to have an abundance of life-sustaining goods and services at our disposal. But there is a grave injustice involved in this tradition.

Where do the ideas, principles, constitutions, governments, and laws that protect our rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness come from? What is the source of the meals, medicines, homes, automobiles, and fighter jets that keep us alive and enable us to flourish? Who is responsible for our freedom, prosperity, and well-being?

Since God is responsible for none of the goods on which human life and happiness depend, why thank him for any such goods? More to the point: Why not thank those who actually are responsible for them? What would a just man do?

Justice is the virtue of judging people rationally--according to what they say, do, and produce--and treating them accordingly, granting to each man that which he deserves.

To say grace is to give credit where none is due--and, worse, it is to withhold credit where it is due. To say grace is to commit an act of injustice.

Rational, productive people--whether philosophers, scientists, inventors, artists, businessmen, military strategists, friends, family, or yourself--are who deserve to be thanked for the goods on which your life, liberty, and happiness depend. ... Thank or acknowledge the people who actually provide the goods. Some of them may be sitting right there at the table with you. And if you find yourself at a table where people insist on saying grace, politely insist on saying justice when they're through. It's the right thing to do.

Craig Biddle is the Editor of The Objective Standard.

I couldn't have said it better myself. These truths are obvious. A simple rudimentary knowledge of history, coupled with basic observation and logic, are all that's required to realize it. Thank you Debi Ghate and Craig Biddle!

Have a joyous, and well earned, Thanksgiving.

Related Reading:

The Star-Ledger's Thanksgiving Tantrum

Why Can’t Tom Moran Acknowledge the Common Collectivist Base of Affirmative Action and 20th Century Atrocities?

A recent op-ed posted by New Jersey Star-Ledger editor Tom Moran rightfully praised Princeton University for inviting a speaker who was “canceled” by another major university. In At Princeton, an inspiring defense of free speech, Moran writes:

Princeton University just came to the rescue of free speech by inviting a conservative speaker to campus after he was cancelled at MIT by progressives who couldn’t stand his views on affirmative action. 

MIT’s canceled speaker is University of Chicago Assistant Prof. Dorian Abbot. It’s very inspiring to see slow but growing pushback against “cancel culture,” including by Leftists (or “progressives,” as Moran would probably prefer). It’s inspiring to see prominent intellectuals who understand that cancel culture is more than rude -- it’s a major threat to free speech. But I want to focus on an equally important sidebar, Moran’s view of the speaker’s take on Affirmative Action. Moran continues:

The story starts when MIT invited an expert on climate change from the University of Chicago, Assistant Prof. Dorian Abbot, to speak at an event sponsored by MIT and open to the public in Boston. Abbot, as it happens, is an aggressive opponent of affirmative action and has spoken and written about the damage he believes it’s causing to academia.

Americans believe, by a 3-1 margin, that race and ethnicity should play no role in hiring and promotions, and last year even blue California voted against affirmative action by a whopping 12-point margin. So his views are well within the mainstream, at least outside college campuses.

But Abbot expresses them in caustic language that seems intended to provoke. Here’s how he described affirmative action in an article he co-authored in Newsweek in August:

“It entails treating people as members of a group rather than as individuals, repeating the mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century. It requires being willing to tell an applicant, ‘I will ignore your merits and qualifications and deny you admission because you belong to the wrong group.’”

To be clear, I think that’s nuts. You can make a reasonable argument against affirmative action, but that’s not it. Like it or not, affirmative action is an effort to crack open the doors to a more diverse group, a recognition that they have been closed for too long by racism and privilege. Hitler and Stalin had something entirely different in mind.

In fact, Abbot is spot-on, and we ignore his point at our, and America’s, peril. Abbot is referring, of course, to collectivism, the premise that the focus of moral, political, and cultural concern is the group, rather than the individual. Given that America’s foundation is built on collectivism’s opposite, individualism, why can’t Tom Moran acknowledge the common collectivist base that affirmative action and 20th century atrocities obviously share?

True, Hitler and Stalin (and other 20th Century monsters) didn’t have increased educational opportunities for members of minority groups in mind. But Hitler’s racist fascist imperialist dictatorship and Stalin’s imperialistic communist “workers paradise” couldn’t have happened without collectivist rationalizations. And neither could Affirmative Action. 

Moran claims the collectivist argument is not “a reasonable argument against affirmative action.” Apparently, he thinks it’s fine to ignore individual merits and qualifications in order to favor one racial group over another. I think that’s unreasonable -- and immoral. I think Affirmative Action’s racist orientation toward individuals’ immutable group characteristics (skin pigmentation) is grossly unfair. I believe it’s monstrous to penalize today’s non-racial minority students for injustices perpetrated by their racial ancestors against the ancestors of the intended racial minority beneficiaries of Affirmative Action. None of today’s college-aspiring students are either guilty of or victims of historical injustices. To paraphrase the great Thomas Sowell, no one is born with pre-packaged guilt or pre-packaged grievances. To say otherwise is to embrace collectivism.

Moran never explains why he believes Abbot’s argument is “nuts”. But the very next sentence tells it all. Affirmative Action, he says, “is an effort to crack open the doors to a more diverse group, a recognition that they have been closed for too long by racism and privilege [my emphasis].” Closed to whom? To a collection of ancestors, that’s who. That is the exact collectivist justification advanced by Hitler against the Jews—that individual living Jews are guilty because the Jews as a group have always been a plague on humanity. Stalin advanced a similar argument against the bourgeoisie to justify their extermination.

Yes, there are strong reasonable arguments against affirmative action, like its practical failures. But moral fundamentals trump the practical arguments, because bad morals lead to bad practical results. Affirmative Action programs fail because they ignore individual merits and qualifications and focus on group identity—or at least prioritize group identities. That’s the common denominator uniting “the atrocities of the 20th century” and Affirmative Action. Note that Moran places racial diversity over individual merit.

Why can’t Moran see the obvious? Because to acknowledge the evil of collectivism would explode the collectivist essence of his diversity worldview. 

Judging people as members of a group. That’s precisely what Affirmative Action does. And that’s exactly what Hitler and Stalin did. True, as degrees of evil, the Nazis and the Communists were far worse than Affirmative Action, and I don’t believe Abbot intended to say Affirmative Action and its advocates are modern day 20th Century monsters. But ideas are the primary drivers of history. Affirmative Action rests on a philosophical premise that travels a road that, in the distant future, ends with the Hitlers and Stalins of the world.

Philosophy is the engine of history. America was Founded on the individualist philosophic ideals of The Enlightenment. With that beacon of justice shining forward, we got the abolition of slavery, the equality of property rights for women, the end of marriage inequality, the universal voting rights for woman and blacks, the end of Jim crow and legalized segregation, and the receding of racism in America, the reactionary efforts of the neo-racists of the woke “anti-racist” movement notwithstanding. Collectivism is the ideology of and for savages, and the collectivist group diversity movements, like Affirmative Action, is indeed to “repeat the [philosophic] mistake that made possible the atrocities of the 20th century.” Collectivism is always dangerous whenever and wherever it surfaces. Given its terrible track record, it should be called out. Kudos to Abbot for his moral courage in calling out these dangerous ideas. Moran is wrong to poo-poo Abbot’s brilliant observations. It’s his revulsion at Abbot that’s nuts.

Related Reading:

MIT Abandons Its Mission. And Me. Let’s make sure my cancellation is the last. That begins by standing up and saying no to the mob.By Darian Abott

Politics 2012: Can “American Individualism” Save the GOP – and America?

Individualism vs. Collectivism and the Neglected False Moral Dichotomy

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

E.J. Dionne Answers the Call With Assault on "Extreme Individualism"

Pope Francis’ Critics Fail to Appreciate the Fundamental Motives Behind His Anti-Individualism

Collectivism Generates Irrational Hatred

The Founding Fathers, Not ‘Diversity,’ is the Solution to ‘Our Racialized Society’

Related Viewing:

Individualism vs Collectivism - Dr. Yaron Brook

QUORA: ‘Do you think atheism or communism is the most evil ideology of all time?’

 QUORA: ‘Do you think atheism or communism is the most evil ideology of all time?’

I posted the following answer: 

The question is invalid. Atheism is not an ideology. Ideology is a system of abstract ideas. Atheism (in the conventional sense) is not a  system of abstract ideas. Rather, it is merely the absence of belief in a supernatural God. But I’ll play along.

Communism is atheistic only in the conventional religious sense. It rejects the God of the monotheistic religions. But it doesn’t reject the belief in a “higher” being. It embraces it. It simply secularizes God in the form of a collective that possesses its own consciousness that stands above and separate from the individuals that comprise it, just as religion places its God above and separate from human individuals. This collective, the “community” or society as a whole, is the higher power whose general will is embodied in the state, just as God’s will is embodied in the church (or synagogue or mosque). In Communism's version, the state is in the role of the church, and somehow is able to decipher the will of the collective, and then to impose that will at the point of a gun (there is no other way to impose a collective will).

Of course, the collective doesn’t exist in reality. What exists are individual human beings. The “community” or “society” is an abstraction that, in proper usage, stands for a number of individuals living in a particular geographical region and/or living under a particular legal system. But Communism embodies the idea that the collective stands above and separate from its individual components, who are mere cells in the larger collective organism, and that possesses values and interests and a will that supersedes and are separate from the individuals’ values, interests, and will.

Of course, this cannot be true. The community has no brain or consciousness. It is not an entity. It can’t think, feel, value, or choose. Only actual individuals can do that. Enter the state. Somehow, state officials—holding to the faith of a community “consciousness”—just “knows” what the community thinks, feels, values, or chooses how to act. This is the basis upon which the state acts on what it claims is the community’s good, irregardless of what any of its individual citizens desire. The thoughts, feelings, values, choices, and rights of any particular individuals are irrelevant to the community’s supreme will. This justifies the state’s imposition of communism’s collective moral vision of how the community functions. Being supreme over its individual “cells”, the community is embodied in the state apparatus. The state’s officials or ruling elites consider themselves morally justified to sacrifice any individual’s (or faction of individual’s) interests, wealth, or very lives for the good of the community. This belief system can manifest in no other way.*

Communism, then, rejects the monotheistic God of Christianity or Islam or Judaism. But it does not reject the mystical belief of religion in a higher being. In this broader sense, Communism is not atheistic. It simply secularizes religion’s mysticism, substituting religion’s God with the  Community.** 

Mysticism is the common base of Communism  and religion. A genuine atheist doesn’t believe in any being or deity higher than man. 

To play along, as I said I would do at the outset, let’s reimagine the question. If the question where “Do you think religion or communism is the most evil ideology of all time?”, I would have to say Communism. If the standard is the sheer scale of raw brutality, I would have to say Communism is the most evil. Theocracy, the unity of church and state—which, like communism, also embodies the will of its deity—comes in second place on the scale of brutality.

* [This is why, by its very nature, Communism must inevitably descend into tyranny, poverty, slavery, and murder. Soviet Russia, Red China, Cuba, North Korea, et al, were not aberrations. They were the unavoidable result communist ideology.]

** [Fascism, the other major form of socialism***, also secularizes’s religion’s mysticism. Nazism’s supreme collective is the race. Italian fascism deifies society as a whole. Marxian Communism, for its part, deifies “the proletariat”, or “workers”. 

*** [See my answer to Quora: “Is fascism a capitalist ideology?"]

Related Reading:

QUORA *: ‘Why do people find communism so terrifying as an idea?’

Nazism, Communism, Atheism, and the Enlightenment

Individualism vs. Collectivism: Our Future, Our Choice—Craig Biddle

Related Viewing:

Christianity: Good or Bad for Mankind? —A Debate with Dinesh D'Souza vs. Andrew Bernstein

Yaron Brook Answers: Communism vs. Atheism

Is Capitalism 'Forced Voluntarism?'

 QUORA; ‘If capitalism is simply about "voluntary exchange", then what is wrong with people democratically electing a socialist government? If people simply volunteer to not be part of the system, then isn't it a violation of voluntarism to force capitalism?’

I posted this answer:

It’ll take a little doing to unpack the fallacies and contradictions in the question.

To begin, Capitalism is more than simply “voluntary exchange.” Capitalism is integral to a broadly free society. So for now I will use the broader term “voluntarism.” I will get back to the narrower economic term “voluntary exchange” later. 

Any society has laws that restrain voluntarism—even a fully free society. You can’t, for example, voluntarily decide to disregard traffic laws, thus endangering other drivers. In the broadest philosophical sense, if you want to live in a society, you must obey the society’s laws, which are by nature backed by the police power of the state. So you can’t simply “volunteer to not be part of the system”—that is, wantonly disregard the laws—if you are a civilized person. You’ll end up with fines or in prison. 

Government is the one institution in any society that has a monopoly on the legal use of physical force. Both socialism and Capitalism have governments. So what we’re comparing here is two types of social systems that feature two different legal applications of physical force. The two types of force are, defensive and offensive. Offensive force can be symbolized by a street thug pulling a stickup. Defensive force can be symbolized by the cop that comes to the rescue of the victims of the street thug. 

Both types of government use defensive force. Capitalism features a government that uses force only in defense and only in retaliation against those who initiate its use. While both socialism and Capitalism use defensive force, socialism uses both defensive and offensive (aggressive or initiatory) force against its citizens: In other words, Socialist government protects its citizens only from the private thugs. Its government officials, acting as representatives of the state, are outside the law, taking people’s freedoms at gunpoint (the threat of arrest and incarceration) for its rights-violating collective purposes (wealth redistribution, regulation, controls) regardless of whether the private citizen consents or not. Capitalist government * uses only defensive force, and it constitutionally subordinates its government officials to the same laws as it applies to private citizens. In other words, Capitalism not only protects you from street thugs. It protects you from the government ever becoming the street thug.

In practice, a socialist government is one that empowers an elite (elected or not) to use the coercive legal machinery of the state to force people into its collectivist programs. You can’t “simply volunteer to not be part of the system.” 

Capitalism is the opposite of a socialist system. It’s government protects each individual’s inalienable right to make his own choices, and only steps in against those who violate the same rights of others. In other words, a socialist government is predominantly an offensive force, coercively subordinating the citizen to state interests. A government in a Capitalist society is strictly a defensive force -- an agent of the individual’s self-defense, a protector of individuals’ rights to pursue his own interests. That is the political difference between Capitalism and socialism. It’s a fundamental moral difference. It’s a difference in the legal application of physical force.

Capitalism is the banning of the initiation of force from human relationships, including in the relationships between government and the governed. Returning to the economic concept, “voluntary exchange,” there is no other legitimate kind of exchange. Any method of exchange other than voluntarism is the method of a criminal. Voluntary exchange is the absence of force. To say it is “a violation of voluntarism to force capitalism” is nonsense on stilts. “Forced Capitalism” is a contradiction in terms, because forced voluntarism is a contradiction in terms. 

Let me add, for further clarity, some real life context. Voluntary socialism—socialism separate from the state—is perfectly compatible with a Capitalist society. Fortunately, there is ample historical evidence for this fact. The Communistic Societies of the United States; Harmony, Oneida, the Shakers, and Others by Charles Nordhoff and History of American Socialisms by John Humphrey Noyes, both first published in the 1870s, feature first-person accounts by the authors of their experiences living in and/or founding voluntary socialist societies within the American free market system. Socialism separate from the state can, does, and historically has, existed—even in history’s pioneering Capitalist bastion, the United States of America. 

Under Capitalism -- that is, in a free society -- people can form socialist societies or associations through voluntary consent. Like-minded people can voluntarily transfer, by mutual agreement with others who choose to join, their “voluntary exchange” or other freedoms as a means of personal support to a central authority representing the collective. But that is a voluntary contractual agreement. What people can’t do in a Capitalist society is to install, by vote (democratic) or other means, a socialist government to force others to give up those freedoms. People can volunteer to not participate in the Capitalist system, within the confines of the society’s rights-protecting laws—that is, as long as they leave all others free to pursue other values unmolested. You can’t say the same about state socialism. Just observe the myriad socialisms of the past century, from national socialist nations like NAZI Germany or Fascist Italy, to straight-up Communisms like Soviet Russia and Red China, to hybrids like Venezuela. 

As to “what is wrong with people democratically electing a socialist government?”—plenty. Such a process means the majority is forcing the minority into socialism. There is nothing voluntary about majoritarian tyranny. It’s just another example of how democracy unconstrained by constitutionally protected individual rights—so-called “pure” democracy or democracy fundamentalism—is just another form of totalitarianism. Democratic socialism is just as immoral and illegitimate and hostile to individual liberty as fascism, communism, theocracy, monarchy, or military dictatorship. An elected legislature can trample an individual’s rights as easily as any dictator can.

* [Or to the extent Capitalism exists: Today’s “capitalist” societies are in reality mixed systems.]

For more of my thoughts on this, see my essays Criminal Socialism vs. a Free Society and QUORA: ‘Is capitalism voluntary?’. Also see Foundations of a Free Society. Also compare through these two essays:

What is Capitalism?—Ayn Rand

What is Socialism?—Robert L. Heilbroner

Both Rand and Heilbroner are consistent, honest advocates of their favored social systems. As you will come to understand, Capitalism is the “laissez-faire” system, leaving peaceful, rights-respecting citizens free to pursue their lives. Socialism, as Heilbroner readily acknowledges, is incompatible with personal freedom, including freedom of speech.

Related Reading:

QUORA: ‘Is capitalism voluntary?’

Socialism vs. Welfare Statism: Why These Terms Matter

QUORA *: ‘What makes someone a socialist?'

On ‘Capitalist Government’ and Corporate Bailouts

Socialism's Totalitarian Nature Cannot Be Obscured by 'Democratic Socialism'

Democracy Fundamentalism vs. Americanism