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PUNISHES SUCCESS AND REWARDS LAZINESS
SOCIALISM
SOCIALISM ERODES FREEDOM
What is socialism? Socialism is a political and economic system in which property and the means of production are owned collectively (in practice, by the government).
In spite of all the good intentions of many socialists, it’s probably too much to expect people to stay good and honest when you task them with forcibly redistributing several trillion dollars every year and regulating almost every corner of other people’s lives. That kind of power can make a sinner from a saint in no time.
Today, so many Americans are abandoning freedom and embracing socialism. They have no idea what socialism is about. When the government controls everything and makes all the decisions big and small and decide how much water and food you can have, what you can learn in school, where you can live, what job you can have, and how you should think. There are no choices. There is no freedom.
State action to provide egalitarian social programs requires extensive redistribution of wealth and excessive government regulation of the society and economy. This, in turn, would minimize the principles of individual liberty.
70% of millennials say they would vote for a socialist. Yet today we have more freedom, better life expectancy, higher literacy, lower child mortality, less disease, and less hunger than at any time in human history. If you could choose any era in human history in which to be born and you did not pick today you would be insane. This is due to the collapse of socialism and the expansion of democratic capitalism.
Government giveaways polarize society into segments, each trying to get what it wants at somebody else's expense, creating mutual bitterness that can tear a society apart.
We all know about the horrors of Nazi Germany but the slaughter of 100 million people by communist regimes of the twentieth century seems not to have registered. Specifically, historians now estimate, only as a starting point, 61 million deaths in the Soviet Union, 38.6 million in China, two million in Cambodia (then called the Khmer Rouge), 1.6 million in North Korea, and 1.2 million in Yugoslavia. We know lots about Hitler — who his girlfriend was, what kind of music he listened to — but virtually nothing about Lenin, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, or the others in Communism’s panoply.
State action to provide egalitarian social programs requires extensive redistribution of wealth and excessive government regulation of the society and economy. This, in turn, would minimize the principles of individual liberty.
Communism promises equality but delivers scarcity for all but the elites in its apparatus. It pitches social justice and delivers mass enslavement, widespread misery, social distrust, and severe punishment for all who might dissent. We’ve seen these phenomena happen all over the world, in China, North Korea, Southeast Asia, post-World War II Eastern Europe, Cuba, Central America, and perhaps most notably visible today in the starvation and chaos of Venezuela.
The difference between communism and socialism? Communism results from a violent overthrow of the status quo, while socialism would result from a gradual internal change. Communism is a more extreme version of socialism.
In spite of all the good intentions of many socialists, it’s probably too much to expect people to stay good and honest when you task them with forcibly redistributing several trillion dollars every year and regulating almost every corner of other people’s lives. That kind of power can make a sinner from a saint in no time.
Genuinely good people rarely run for office, so we are left all too often with dirtbags and demagogues in government. So we really need to think about what history often tells us is the worst of both worlds: Big Government run by Bad People.
The idea of socialism is one that is idealistic. It relies on the concept that humans are generally good and will do what is necessary to help others succeed. There is a harsh reality check that becomes a disadvantage rather quickly with this governing structure in the fact that some humans are not this way. There will never be 100% compliance at a national level for this government, even if it legally mandated to do.
Entrepreneurs are instantly disincentivized from putting in the effort to build up a business from scratch. Even if the government doesn’t demand 100% ownership of the venture, these leaders can feel like their governing officials are taking an unnecessarily high percentage of their profits.
Poverty eventually develops. Welfare is supposed to give people just enough to scrape by so that the desire to have more money leads someone to a job.
That’s why governments often counter the results of this disadvantage with mandatory work.
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