You can do good things and brand them as socialism, don't get hung up on the name. The Socialism that has been implemented is a scheme to remove independence and self reliance. Socialism should stand for working together for mutual benefit and a common goal - for example a society that is rather secure and where your house of birth is not strictly the indicator on which social strata you'll end up. Without this society is a dead end unless you're extremely gifted or well off... a modern jungle.
Improvement of the individual and the whole system should be one of the corner stones instead of the current's... "Welp, Somebody do what I don't want to", "We need new voters, let's import them", "You invested your working life to paying into a pot so that somebody else can plunder it", etc.
Of course you have the main problem of "the weakest link" and the "quality of the individual" itself. It all boils down to this.