Socialism is the economic system that presumes society will be better off when everyone lives at the expense of everyone else.
People familiar with the Ten Commandments will see that this requires organized coveting and theft. No Christian has the authority to live at the expense of others. The Apostle Paul wrote several times in his epistles that coveting the wealth of others is idolatry. (e.g. Ephesians 5:5) He stated clearly that no such person can attain eternal life.
Jesus dictated the book of Revelation to the Apostle John. In chapter 22 and verse 15, He said that no idolater can inherit eternal life.
Why praise socialism? Because it is a path to a secular Utopia which can only be hell on earth, as the people in Lenin’s Russia, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Little Kim’s North Korea found out.
The economist Ludwig von Mises showed in 1920 [1,2] that since a socialist economy destroys price information via government intrusion, the myriad of participants in the economy are unable to make a fully rational calculation about true profit and loss. Any economic activity that operates at a loss cannot be “sustainable”, a concept the left loves to scold us about, yet cannot really grasp.
Taking another approach, the Nobel economist F.A. Hayek showed that a national economy had such an immense myriad of dynamic economic relationships that no single committee or bureaurcracy, no matter how smart or how well staffed, could possibly know enough to direct prices or production levels. His Nobel Lecture [3] was entitled The Pretence of Knowledge. Hayek had previously used this idea as the basis for a very thorough article [4] on the subject, “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”
When these two different withering critiques of socialism are combined, it is easy to see that not only is it dangrously foolish to think that economic decisions can successfully be made by government, but that competing bureaucracies will invariably react to the consequences of intrusions in the marketplace by each other. It would be like trying to control the height of waves on a lake by measuring them from the back of a boat circling in its own wake.
[1] Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Ludwig von Mises
http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf
[2] Why a Socialist Economy is “Impossible” by Joseph T. Salerno
http://mises.org/econcalc/POST.asp
[3] The Pretense of Knowledge
http://mises.org/daily/3229
[4] “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” American Economic Review, XXXV, No. 4; September, 1945, pp. 519–30.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=92
So when a blind man begs at the temple gate, or an orphan begs, is that coveting and idolatry?
Clearly there are people who abuse the system and are guilting of laziness, coveting, theft and idolatry. But I don't think that applies to most people who would support safety nets, or even most people who use them.
So when a blind man begs at the temple gate, or an orphan begs, is that coveting and idolatry?
Clearly there are people who abuse the system and are guilting of laziness, coveting, theft and idolatry. But I don't think that applies to most people who would support safety nets, or even most people who use them.