Political Memes

To be fair I had several critiques of capitalism, by far the most frequent and important being about wealth distribution, accumulation, and extraction under capitalism.

But yes, in a socialist society you generally have basic necessities exist not as commodities but rather as guaranteed services. This looks different depending on the specific type of socialism (communism, mutualism, etc.). Even in a pure market socialist society, they would still be priced substantially different than in a capitalist society.

Under a capitalist system (as commodities), these goods/services are not priced at the labor value required to output them, they're priced at their market value. This is why in the U.S, shelter pricing (mortgage/rent, utilities, repairs, etc.) account for 50-75% of an average person's income. In the USSR it was 5-10%. Not to say the USSR was entirely socialist, but rather that the way they setup housing was the same way a (state) socialist society could setup housing.

Under a socialist system where these goods/services are decommodified, they could still have their value calculated as a product of labor time, and instead of being bought/sold on a market, they'd be instead provided for by the state. That way laborers would still be compensated if that was the work they wanted to do, as their products have value to society.

The common capitalist critique to this is "what if nobody works" then we start to get into the idea of socially necessary labor and not necessary labor. Working for an ad agency, for example, is socially unnecessary behavior. It's actually socially harmful (encouraging greater consumption, often of harmful substances like high sugar drinks or in the past tobacco). Socially necessary labor would be construction, food, etc. This distinction would be an early step in democratizing the economic sector, prying it out of the hands of authoritarian capitalists.

If there aren't enough people volunteering for socially necessary labor, then the state mandates it the same way it's mandated in many countries to go through a couple years of military service. But instead of learning how to effectively bomb kids in some middle eastern country, you're instead building houses for homeless people or making food for starving children.

I think it's fair that with my wealth I can choose to [...]

This is a very idealist way to look at the world. Socialists are materialists, capitalists are idealists. What this means is capitalists will have some principle that they use as a foundational concept, like "property rights exist" and then use that to determine your concept of fairness. Socialists look at real outcomes in the real world. We see what capitalism actually creates, what real, physical conditions exist in the world because of this so-called "fair" presumption of property rights, and we come to the determination that there's nothing fair about a dozen people having as much wealth as 4 billion poor people, even though that's a natural outcome of what capitalists call a "fair" system.