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10/13/24: Still here, tomorrow gets a new post, one that I didn't want to write. Many things going on, not enough time in the day. I have a dozen articles that I need to finish. I am working on them. I promise.

Refuting more Socialism Part 2

This is the other video my responder gave me to watch. Please excuse me for a moment while I put a fine edge on my fillet knife.

It sounds like this guy studied at the knee of Robert Reich. “18 million Millionaires.” What he didn’t tell you was about 14.4 million of them (80% if you don’t math) are first-generation millionaires. Also, most of these self-made millionaires didn’t start on their “second million” until they were on average 50 years old. That means they worked hard, lived within their income and saved for THIRTY YEARS to get to that point. He laments the wealth of the millionaires, yet implies those rich people were lucky, when it actually took decades of hard work and discipline.

In stark contrast to those millionaires is the nihilistic YOLO hedonists that seem to be the prevailing type of young person. These YOLO’s dig themselves a $90K student debt hole at age 21 for a worthless degree in Gender Studies or Comparative English, and then never earn enough to pay that student debt off. That’s not including the car loan that has “negative equity” from their prior two cars plus the credit card debt as they try to keep up with the Joneses. With all of that debt and stress, these people will never realize that goal of becoming a millionaire. That inevitably leads to anger, resentment and jealousy.

He then laments for an extended period crying about how broken the US medical system is. Thankfully, I’ve already written on the subject to provide a simple, clear solution to fix healthcare, some of it anyway. Curing HealthcareAnd any time you want to see what American socialized healthcare would look like, go to any Veterans Administration hospital. It’s free, and you pretty much get what you pay for it. Once you get into the system, it’s pretty good. But to get into it, you’re looking at the paperwork equivalent of trying to successfully pole vault a 16’ tall bar with a 6’ pole.
The best way I can describe such a system is, “The efficiency of the DMV and the compassion of the IRS.” And Charlie Gard is one of the many victims faces of such a system.

The OP also quoted Albert Einstein from the first article in the first issue of Monthly Review, which Al founded in 1947. Why Socialism:

Here’s the conclusion:

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that a planned economy is not yet socialism. A planned economy as such may be accompanied by the complete enslavement of the individual. The achievement of socialism requires the solution of some extremely difficult socio-political problems: how is it possible, in view of the far-reaching centralization of political and economic power, to prevent bureaucracy from becoming all-powerful and overweening? How can the rights of the individual be protected and therewith a democratic counterweight to the power of bureaucracy be assured?

Albert died in 1955, and I wonder, after he saw some of the ravages that the Soviet system inflicted upon its own people, if he ever changed his mind on the subject. By the time Albert had passed, the Soviet government had starved to death or just executed over twenty million people. And every other centralized economy has followed suit to varying degrees.

In conclusion, I will never claim or imply that Capitalism is a perfect system. It’s not. No system developed or run by us fallible humans will ever get close to that goal. Capitalism is a cobbled-together mish-mash of kluges that the only things keeping it from exploding have been duct tape, bailing wire and hope. But it’s the best we can do. Yes, people are “left behind” in a Capitalist system for a variety of reasons. But the people in the middle and high ends of the bell-curve move the whole population to the right. By their efforts, more and better goods are produced cheaper. The excess capital they generate is used by government or private corporations to provide for those who can’t work. The poorest of the poor in this country would be considered rich in any undeveloped country.

The only allure of a Socialist economy is that the people on the right side of the economic bell curve are taxed and forced all the way to the left side of the curve, where everybody sits, equally in squalor and misery. Is that really the kind of “equality” you want? Because that’s a real “Dog in the Manger” kind of attitude to have.

Then, of course, when the common people start exercising their own “enlightened self-interest” and throwing the centralized and command-controlled economy into chaos, well, the leaders just start shooting or starving those “dissidents.” ONE HUNDRED MILLION people between 1917 and 1999 were killed by their own Socialist governments. Everywhere Socialism got a foothold, it became a cancer and people paid the price.

For recent examples of this, in the past few years we heard about the average Venezuelan losing about 17 pounds of body weight from lack of food when the Socialist government nationalized the economy. Or that North Koreans are about 1.5” shorter than their cousins in South Koreas because of the decades of starvation diets. I can’t imagine the amount of mental gymnastics from all of these people who push how wonderful Socialism will be, while simultaneously ignoring the millions of dead in the wake of that same system. If you get the “we’ll get it right this time” argument from them, remind them of Jordan Peterson’s words, “How arrogant can you be to think you’ll do better than everyone else who has already run a Socialist system?”

Failure is a feature, not a bug in the system of Socialism. It literally requires individuals to do things against their own self-interest. While you can get people to do that in the short-term, maybe, in the long term, human nature wins out. And when people’s desire to act in their own self-interest exceeds their desire to act for the community, Socialist governments have the choice to exterminate the people or collapse. When they had the choice, these governments always chose the former.

You can’t sell me on the advantages of Socialism. It looks great on paper, however it fails miserably when put into execution. Marx and Engels were the greatest snake-oil salesman in human history.

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