1. The problem with socialism is its similarity to crony capitalism: governments run the businesses, or businesses run the government. This is an unstable duality. Capitalism (constitutional democracy and the whole bit) is supposed to be a balance of power based on 3: judicial, executive, legal … or government, business, people—(just try to make simple dependent groups of three) Socialism poses greed vs. good. That’s unstable. We need greed v. power v. good.
2. Labor union paradox: Here is a problem. labor unions–which originally were supposed to be a buffer between gov’ and business—appears to function as either a government interfering into business, or a business interfering into government—both corrupt. How do we tell the difference between a corrupt tool or a buffer? Check the third option– the “people”. In this case our little guy suffers from “red tape” prohibiting or punishing life-saving. Hmm…The Solution is a balance among People vs. business vs. government. Don’t end up with a duality! We forget that if we make a company to protect the little guy, it’s still a company—and a company is not the same thing as the little guy! Companies are fine, but usually get corrupt after every 20 yrs or so. (Ha, people do too!)
3. Example: Note that in this particular case the company pressures the employee (fired) because the government pressures the company (law) because the individual (through the help of labor unions) wants to sue. That’s the struggle of power vs. greed vs. good. Now life is in danger because someone wanted to be able to sue someone for saving life (or labor unions) and the law is supposed to uphold protection of life—whether or not you deserve it. Because the right to life and liberty are not given by govt, but by man’s creator. (the pursuit of happiness is the ability to carry both out…in this case be able to save life!)
Government vs. business? Crony capitalism vs. socialism? No. I want freedom. Wait–“I want”? That’s the individual. I must choose life and save other people’s lives. A free country must choose freedom. If wrongness is selfishness v. power v. greed (bad man v big government v corrupt businesses) we must replace it with goodness: Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
P.S. Bottom line: replace unstable dualities (either/or) with stable (or self-correcting) trinities (groups of 3)!
UPDATE: I’m reading “The Federalist Papers” by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton. Only on the 7th letter, but it’s great stuff! The founding fathers wrote about the “natural tendencies”to sin of mankind and the desires of greed being equal to the desires of power or glory. They also predicted a lot about the Civil war etc. and State’s rights. Wow.
Jubilation 
As a college student, no doubt your studies into “socialism” are likely to have been designed by your university to have been superficial and to have concluded that capitalism, while it does have flaws, is “the best of all possible worlds”. College educations in capitalist countries are not trying to create the next generation of revolutionaries, but the next generation of business and governmental leaders, after all.
Classical Marxist socialism has nothing at all in common with “crony capitalism” or any other kind of capitalism; nor does Stalinism, which is what, to most university political science departments, is understood to have been an example of classical Marxism brought into existence. It was not. Stalinism was a complete repudiation of the basic tenets of classical Marxism – it was nationalist instead of internationalist; it was bureaucratic instead of democratic; and it was always seeking “peaceful coexistence” with the capitalist world, rather than trying to overthrow it.
Read Trotsky: “The Revolution Betrayed” for a quick overview of a revolutionary’s – as opposed to a reformist’s – Marxist-Leninist critique of Stalinism.
Likewise, your analysis that “labor unions were supposed to be a buffer between government and business” is off the mark. Labor unions were supposed to represent the interests of the working class in opposition to both the capitalist class and big business’ interests and the capitalist class’ government. Labor unions, when they were led by revolutionary socialists and anarchists back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, were organized around the recognition that the interests of the capitalists and the working class were diametrically opposed and irreconcilable. This was the fundamental economic basis for the existence of the class struggle between capital and labor. Today the pro-capitalist union leadership – although it often fraudulently calls itself “socialist” or even “communist” – actually acts as a brake on working-class militancy and actively espouses the belief that the interests of capital and labor are one and the same – a hideous falsehood that had led the working class through defeat after defeat and in the US threatens the continued existence of the labor unions at all.
You are making a mistake when you propose that the “government” i.e. a capitalist government stands between the “people” and “big business”. We in the US, for example, live in a class society dominated by the capitalist class. The government is a bourgeois republic – a capitalist government, whose laws primarily delineate the rights of the property-owning class – the capitalist class. This government is the shield and sword of the capitalist class and its cops and court and legislative system is not impartial – it will always rule on the side of the capitalist class against the workers.
For this, you need to read Lenin’s excellent pamphlet “The State and Revolution”.
Any worker who hasn’t read these two books is functioning like one of the blind men in the famous story of “The Blind Men and the Elephant” she tries to determine the nature of capitalist society and the class divisions in it.
IWPCHI