Brushfire of Freedom
Ram Rants
In stunning evidence that our public education systems are failing our children, a recent Rasmussen survey indicated that just 53% of Americans believe capitalism is better than socialism. In fact, 33% of adults under 30 believe socialism is better than capitalism. That’s one-third for those of you who attended Berkley.
Let’s ignore for a moment the fact that most socialist governments become totalitarian regimes that repress and destroy the population. Let’s ignore the fact that socialism has failed in virtually every incarnation, in every country where it’s been tried. That includes the United States, where initial efforts at socialism during our colonization nearly destroyed the colonies before they got off the ground. If you’d like a more recent example, check out Detroit. About the only good thing about their drift into socialism is the fact that you can buy a Detroit home right now for about $1.00.
Let’s ignore the fact that America, as a capitalist society, has been a world leader for many decades, and that our rise to that position was nearly instantaneous when compared to other nations who have led the world.
Socialism sux for two main reasons.
First, in order for socialism to work, we would have to see the evolution of the Socialist Man (or Woman). This would be a person that is just as willing, or even more so, to work as hard to support their neighbor as they are to support themselves. We’re not talking about family here, we’re talking about the guy in the next county or in a different state. The Socialist Man (or Woman) enjoys supporting the faceless “them” without any compensation for themselves.
For those of you who think you are the Socialist Man (or Woman), please feel free to send an email to Brushfire. We will be happy to make arrangements to collect some or all of your paychecks. Yes, that’s exactly what it means. You just keep working, we’ll relieve you of the burden of that nasty old money. And thanks for being the Socialist Man (or Woman).
Reality check. People in general are not wired that way. We all, at some point, no matter how much we like to serve others, do expect, and are motivated by, some form of personal compensation for our efforts. Translation for those who went to Berkley, people like to get paid.
Barring the evolution of the Socialist Man (or Woman), there is a second reason why socialism sux. Enter Ludwig von Mises, a guy you should have studied in school but were probably too busy trying to finish that paper on Marx. Ludwig was a philosopher and economist from Austria. At 12 he spoke three languages and could read Latin as well. He received his doctorate from the University of Vienna School of Law in 1906 at age 25. For those of you into Objectivism, his New York seminars in the 1940’s were attended by Ayn Rand.
As you might imagine, Ludwig was not a big fan of socialism. It was his work that demonstrated the second reason socialism sux. According to Ludwig, socialism, “...would be disastrous for a modern economy because the absence of private ownership of land and capital goods prevents any sort of rational pricing, or estimate of costs...”. Again to help my friends educated at Berkley, under socialism you would lack an understanding of the fair-market value of products or services because there would be no fair market. Socialism by definition erodes and eventually replaces the market structure and the valuation of production defined by the market. As the market is eroded, cost and price structures begin to shift in random directions. You get $600 toilet seats and free health care, as an example.
This is not a minor consequence of socialism. One historic example of its impact can be seen in the fall of the Soviet Union. With the elimination of the free market, the central planners had no idea how to value specific investments of the “people’s resources”. A basic cost-value calculation was not possible because the pricing and costing structures, normally present in free markets, were absent from their government-controlled society. The result was a distribution of effort and resources based on the views of the central planners, which became more focused on the maintenance of their comfortable life styles and less focused on the people they deemed to govern. The government collapsed under the weight of its on self-serving practices in part because the leadership lacked the information needed to make rational, market-based decisions.
So to pretend that socialism is as good as or better than capitalism is to ignore the facts regarding human nature and market mechanics. There are few people who have crossed the face of this earth who could be said to be the Socialist Man (or Woman). Without this type of personality as a dominate aspect of our culture, the chances for a successful implementation of socialism are dramatically reduced. Those who think the evolution of the Socialist Man (or Woman) is a potential are simply ignoring human nature. Even if such an evolution occurred, the onset of socialism would destroy the free market, crippling any governing body by reducing, and eventually eliminating, key data points needed to manage the government, national defense, and the companies that would be a part of their socialist society. In other words, for those of you who attended Berkley, socialism sux.
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