As the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.Constitution abolished slavery, I’ve long wondered if there could be an analogous amendment abolishing socialism, e.g. “Congress may only allocate funds in exchange for goods and services rendered to the United States”. I know this example wouldn’t work legally but have long speculated whether some sort of language could be constructed to make socialism illegal.

An additional problem would be unintended legal side effects. For example, the Fourteenth Amendment was originally intended as a companion to the Thirteenth Amendment in extending the full rights of citizenship to ex-slaves. However the Supreme Court later gave sweeping interpretations to the Fourteenth Amendment that went far beyond its original intent. Through a similar process, a No-Socialism amendment could have disasterous impact upon the economy if it was improperly written to enable inappropriate interpretation by the Supreme Court.

Along these lines, I think we’ll eventually need to have a balanced budget amendment. This concept was popular a few years ago but later abandoned. A properly constructed balanced budget amendment could have the same impact as a No-Socialism amendment.

The U.S. federal government may eventually be bankrupt by Medicare, Social Security and deficit spending. After the system has crashed and burned there will be an opportunity to craft a revised constitution (a constitutional convention?). The legal system needs to be reconstructed such that people can’t vote themselves a paycheck rather than earn one.