I’ll add that this is practically impossible to replicate in adult life until you get into a “retirement community”.
Small disagreement (that shows how possible it is if effort was made to make it happen): I’m in the military, live in military housing (sizes of which are largely based on family size, up to a certain point… 3 bedroom for my wife, 2 kids and me, but 4 bedroom for the families with 6 goddamn kids omigod I can’t imagine), walk to work and the galley (cafeteria-type place for meals, including for dependents), am surrounded by families with similar lifestyles and kids, have two workout spaces on base (as well as access to off-base gyms and pool through my work), and am a short walk to downtown with plenty of entertainment (and most decent sized military bases have similar situations on base itself).
So it’s possible, you just have to sign your body and will away. Or, like, convince a developer to make a civilian equivalent you can just buy into, like an uber-HOA.
I wouldn’t really call it socialist because it’s not self-funding. The 99% of non-military people put a huuuuuuuge amount of money into the military community to fund its creation and existence.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it a meritocracy either because it’s way easier to buy your way into being an officer than any E-to-O program and because who gets promoted in a difficult rate can get very political very quickly.
Socialism is the workers owning the means of production.
Professional national armies are the government doing things, how collectivist that is depends on the government.
Even the Soviet Red Army while it was fighting Nazis wasn’t “socialist” except in the sense that it was, in theory, defending the rights of the workers.
Small disagreement (that shows how possible it is if effort was made to make it happen): I’m in the military, live in military housing (sizes of which are largely based on family size, up to a certain point… 3 bedroom for my wife, 2 kids and me, but 4 bedroom for the families with 6 goddamn kids omigod I can’t imagine), walk to work and the galley (cafeteria-type place for meals, including for dependents), am surrounded by families with similar lifestyles and kids, have two workout spaces on base (as well as access to off-base gyms and pool through my work), and am a short walk to downtown with plenty of entertainment (and most decent sized military bases have similar situations on base itself).
So it’s possible, you just have to sign your body and will away. Or, like, convince a developer to make a civilian equivalent you can just buy into, like an uber-HOA.
The military is literally a socialist meritocracy and for some reason people insist we can’t have socialism in the US
I wouldn’t really call it socialist because it’s not self-funding. The 99% of non-military people put a huuuuuuuge amount of money into the military community to fund its creation and existence.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it a meritocracy either because it’s way easier to buy your way into being an officer than any E-to-O program and because who gets promoted in a difficult rate can get very political very quickly.
So it’s neither of those things.
Socialism is the workers owning the means of production.
Professional national armies are the government doing things, how collectivist that is depends on the government.
Even the Soviet Red Army while it was fighting Nazis wasn’t “socialist” except in the sense that it was, in theory, defending the rights of the workers.