American aversion to socialism is deep and primal. Have you learned that capitalism built America and will keep it free and strong?

If so, you learned wrong.

This myth is killing us and destroying the foundations of our democracy. Its emotional weight is heavy enough to skew what we see, how we make sense of the world, and how we construct and assess the candidates who will govern us. Skepticism is desperately needed.

In fact, every bite of food, every book we read, every drop of water we drink, every degree of heat warming us, every pill we swallow, every breath we take—all rest on social investments made in the past and the present. Human beings are social animals. For better and worse, we need a government to assure that judicious investments are made for all of us and for posterity—not only for the privileged.

Consider transportation, getting from here to there.

I don’t own the roads or sidewalks that I use each day. The tens of millions of dollars for building and maintaining roads and bridges in Ames alone would annihilate my bank account in a nanosecond. And then there is the cost of roads taking me to Oskaloosa or Omaha. It adds up.

Private enterprise and free market would never give us a viable transportation infrastructure. In Iowa alone, hundreds of small towns would be deleted from the map if they relied on the free market to connect them to the world. Private highways would be an expensive logistical nightmare.

Only social investment provides the infrastructure that undergirds travel in the United States. American roads are built and maintained at public expense and shared equally by everyone. We take this for granted. Only when you live in or visit places with poorly engineered roads or no roads or bridges do you realize how much they contribute to quality of life, to survival.

This is humble, unacclaimed socialism. Our country would be vastly poorer without it. We might not even exist.

We see this more clearly if we further consider the role of capitalists and the state of American railroads.

Railroads opened America’s vast interior to settlement and farming in the second half of the nineteenth century. Steel plows that broke prairie and plains sod arrived by train. Overalls, cookware and boots came in by train. Grain left by train. A railroad station was an umbilicus that fed and organized rural towns and farms.

But, rather than having publicly owned and operated railroads, as did other countries, the federal government nurtured development by granting cash loans and 129 million acres of free land to private railroad companies. States provided them another 51 million acres of free land. Land sales provided railroad companies with capital for building tracks and stations. The mere promise of a railroad connection spiked surrounding land prices.

Although rural settlers counted on railroad connections, the system functioned poorly for them. Railroads issued free passes and favors to government officials and other benefactors, while squeezing farmers to the breaking point and beyond. Railroad greed and corruption spurred the rural discontent that gave rise to the Grange, the Farmers Alliance, and the People’s Party by the end of the nineteenth century. With demands including nationalization of railroads, this rural agitation became seed for various economic and social reforms, but it did not succeed in breaking the outsized power of private railroads.

While the social gains from the government giveaway were real, allowing private owners to reap unregulated and uncontrolled profits was short-sighted and did not result in a stable, robust rail system. In comparison to European countries, where railroads are nationally owned, America’s present rail infrastructure is primitive and minimal. Score a big win for descendants of railroad tycoons, but not so much for us, the public.

Transportation infrastructure is but one area where private ownership does not serve us well. Day by day, private enterprise shows itself unwilling or incapable of countering climate change, delivering affordable medical care to all, dispensing lifesaving drugs at reasonable prices, educating all persons to realize their potential, and taking responsibility for airline safety. When the super wealthy recycle their money through our elections, democracy suffers.

Private enterprise is not decreed by God, the Constitution or common sense.

Private enterprise and socialism have coexisted in our country for nearly 250 years. Good. But whether an enterprise is private or government run, we must weigh, regulate and hold it accountable through democratic processes. Anything less will be our ruin.

It’s up to you and me to claim and practice sanity. No one can do it for us.

Deborah Fink, an Ames anthropologist, is a Quaker who has been learning the lessons of pacifism for the past 50 years. She is a member of the Ames Friends Meeting and serves on the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington, D.C.