How does socialism work?
In a socialist economy, no one owns the oven (or perhaps the oven is owned by the state. But no private individual owns the oven). But if Jane keeps the cookie recipe in her office, doesn’t let others have access to it, procures the ingredients herself, and delegates responsibility for cookie preparation in such a way as to de-skill and disempower the people doing the actual work (so one person cracks eggs all day, another only adds water, while someone else only uses the mixer), she will again be able to take the lion’s share of cookies for herself. Actually, before going on, it is worth pointing out that this last example is going to occur in any economy which is either capitalist, centrally-planned socialist, or market socialist. It is worth taking a few moments here to briefly explain the differences and similarities between the three aforementioned models. At the first level of approximation, those of us who are not economists can most easily classify economies by looking at three
