Public Services Aren’t Socialism — And Words Matter

One of the more persistent arguments I encounter goes something like this:

“If you oppose socialism but support police, fire departments, or public roads, you’re a hypocrite.”

It sounds clever on the surface. It isn’t.

The confusion comes from blurring two very different concepts: public services and an economic system.

Public services are limited functions funded collectively because they address shared needs — emergency response, law enforcement, infrastructure, courts. These are core civic responsibilities that most societies have recognized for centuries. Supporting them does not require government ownership of businesses, farms, factories, or private enterprise.

Socialism, by contrast, is an economic system in which the state owns or controls the means of production and directs economic activity. It moves decision-making away from markets and individuals and into centralized authority.

Those are not the same thing.

Paying taxes for police and fire protection does not mean endorsing state control of industry. Supporting roads does not mean supporting government management of grocery stores, housing, or energy production. A limited government providing defined civic functions is categorically different from a government that directs the economy.

We can debate how large government should be. We can debate how efficiently public services operate. Those are worthwhile discussions.

But equating basic public infrastructure with socialism collapses meaningful distinctions. And when distinctions disappear, so does productive dialogue.

If we want serious conversations about political philosophy, we have to start by using words accurately.