Socialism is a little vague and people disagree on what it means- but in broad strokes terms, it means redistributing power from the center towards the edges of

Socialism is a little vague and people disagree on what it means- but in broad strokes terms, it means redistributing power from the center towards the edges of society. Democracy does that: every person gets one vote, no matter how wealthy they are. Public education does that: knowledge is no longer concentrated on the hands of people who can afford to pay to send their kids to school. Voting rights for women, labor laws, public health care- all these things redistribute power from the center to the edges. The problem with power is that the more you have, the more you can get- so in the absence of corrective forces, which conservatives of course want to remove, any society will follow the path through oligarchy to de facto monarchy. We are possibly on that path now.