Opus 2025-498: Socialists Don’t Sweat

Why does socialism always fail?

I believe it was Margaret Thatcher, who put it in a nutshell when she said, “They always run out of other peoples money.”  Don’t let the word money get you distracted.  Money is just something that substitutes for items that you want to trade or barter.  So let’s just say that eventually the government runs out of other peoples assets.

To most of us that doesn’t mean anything.  We have credit cards, we have debit cards, we know what it is to get something for nothing.  Or we think we get it for nothing.  We have whole generations who don’t understand the central concept of credit that eventually you have to pay it back.  I remember a discussion between Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson.  Charlie was explaining to him that we have a whole generation of people who somehow have used up their credit, but they can go around the credit and order a pizza on the installment plan.  And so they do.  It’s constructed in such a way that it’s outside of the normal controls of credit cards and credit but it’s the same thing just under a different name.

So these people will order a pizza with the idea that they will pay for it and four installments.  Of course, the next day they want another pizza and the next day another pizza.  Because they have no concept of earning their own way, they keep digging deeper and deeper into debt.  In the real world, they will eventually run into a wall where the pizza delivery man will demand immediate payment and since they have no assets to give him, he will take the pizza back to the store.

It always amazes me how people don’t seem to understand, but not only do they have to pay back what they charge on their credit card, but there are extremely high interest rates that are attached if they stretch it out over a period of time.  And the person who will stretch it out over a period of time because they can’t pay it is the same person that will continue charging.

Now let’s look at the large economy.  Ultimately, there are only a few places where assets are developed.  I have heard some summarize it as growing food and mining ore.  They generally come at the cost of sweaty labor.  That sweaty labor is delivered by sweaty laborers.  In other words, someone has to produce the wheat that makes the pizza crust.  Someone else has to produce the bricks that make the oven in which the pizza is baked.  I would guess that a majority of people think that this is done by the little red hen and that instead of saying she would eat it herself she just continues to turn it over to those who have been taking naps.

Ultimately, the sweaty laborer is going to want to be paid.  He’s going to want to be reimbursed for the effort he’s put in.  He will want some assets in exchange for his sweat.  If society takes him for granted and refuses to pay because, after all, we’re in this together, he will eventually retreat to his truck garden where he is raising enough food for him and his family, and the wheatfield will become a weed field.

Then you have a deadly domino effect that kicks in.

First, the mills shut down because there’s no grain to grind.  Then the bakery shuts down because there’s no flour to make bread.  Of course that assumes that the bakers showed up and joined the sweaty masses.  Then the store shelves become empty because nobody is baking bread.  And then the masses riot because there is no bread.  All they see is the fact that the greedy grocery store is not supplying what they need, that the politicians are not delivering on their promises, that the rich are eating cake and caviar.  What they don’t see is that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.

Can the socialist turn out the army to force the sweaty laborers in the field to produce grain?  Possibly for a while.  The problem is that the sweaty laborer who is being amply rewarded for his work will put in that little extra something which produces the profit margin that becomes the asset that can be passed on.  The sweaty laborer who is compelled to work by the bayonet will take a nap every time his minder looks the other way.  Being clever as well as sweaty he will mix in some sand or dirt with the grain in the bag put it on the truck and go home to dinner, if they left anything for him to eat.  If they didn’t leave him anything to eat he will get weaker and starve to death, and there will be no sweaty laborers who know how to raise wheat.

You think this is just my imagination?  Then go look at how socialism worked in the Soviet Union when they starved the Ukrainian peasants to death.  Would you want a television made in a Soviet factory during those days?  It would make a nice paperweight and conversation piece but would be pretty much useless for entertainment.

In other words, socialism doesn’t work because lazy is the default setting in human beings.  Go back and read the story of The Little Red Hen.  When it was time to work, everyone had an excuse.  When it came time to eat, everyone had their napkin around their neck and a fork in their hand.  Unfortunately the little red hen was the one who had the bread and the lazy laborers did not have an army to take it away from her.

Socialism has never worked, and it will never work because you will never get to the place where people will give you according to their ability and only take according to their genuine need.

It is as obvious as it is simple.

homo unius libri