[theBuckwheat]

California has met the future, and it really doesn’t work.

The hard truth is that Utopia is unsustainable, a concept that too many in California love to scold the rest of us about.

Socialism is the fraudulent idea that we will individually and collectively be better off spiritually and economically when we live at the expense of each other. To that end, we must allow others to take our income and wealth from us, just as we take it from them. The fundamental structure of this violates the Ten Commandments that forbid lies, coveting and theft.

From a secular standpoint, none other than Vaclav Havel showed in his essay The Power of the Powerless [1] that socialism induces a moral corruption in every interaction people have, when truth itself must be suppressed to sustain the political ideals that elites are attempting to force society to adopt in their lives. This stirring essay tells us what living hell life in a socialist Utopia really is.

The economist Ludwig von Mises showed in 1920 [2,3] 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 bureaucracy, no matter how smart or how well staffed, could possibly know enough to direct prices or production levels. His Nobel Lecture [4] was entitled The Pretence of Knowledge. Hayek had previously used this idea as the basis for a very thorough article [5] on the subject, “The Use of Knowledge in Society.”

Some American (and Canadian) elites seek to make their countries more like Europe, but the costs of socialism make it morally, socially and economically unsustainable. We see this in the socialist vanguard of Greece and how utterly impoverished socialism is making their economy. We are headed in that direction.

[1] Václav Havel: The Power of the Powerless
http://www.vaclavhavel.cz/showtrans.php?cat=clanky&val=72_aj_clanky.html&typ=HTML
http://bit.ly/4bqmRu

[2] Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth by Ludwig von Mises
http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf

[3] Why a Socialist Economy is “Impossible” by Joseph T. Salerno
http://mises.org/econcalc/POST.asp

[4] The Pretense of Knowledge
http://mises.org/daily/3229

[5] “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
http://bit.ly/wne9GU

[lurk]

Your post summed up: When Children Govern

[aquila48]

Good post - thanks for the links.

[Nevadan]

Thanks for the links.

[Gritty]

The fundamental structure of this violates the Ten Commandments that forbid lies, coveting and theft.

Good comments.

One might easily observe socialism violates all of the Ten Commandments and Biblical principles (such as listed in Proverbs) and be even more comprehensive than the above listing.

Socialism is a system which subverts Natural Law, subverts that which is best and worthy in human nature, and encourages and rewards the worst.

[aquila48]

I live in the bay area - I have a rain gauge in the back yard and this year it registered 26 inches (from October to now), which is double the normal. Most of it came in 4 separate rain storms and they were warm thus they didn’t produce as much snow accumulation as we normally get. Still the precipitation was there and should have been captured by the system of reservoirs along the Sierra foothills.

I have a suspicion that this crisis is being hyped as part of the push toward “climate change” laws that will be coming later this year (the Pope will be part of it). Governor moonbeam is a rabid advocate of that, so it is totally in his interest to make the problem seem much worse than it is.

[Reeses]

Something important to recognize: socialism is driven by population density. Limiting the amount of freshwater is highly effective at limiting its growth. California doesn’t need desalination, it needs less people moving into the high density coastal cities.

[spokeshave]

obel economist F.A. Hayek showed that a national economy had such an immense myriad of dynamic economic relationships that no single committee or bureaucracy, no matter how smart or how well staffed, could possibly know enough to direct prices or production levels.

Basic theorem of Cybernetics.....the controlling system must be at least as complex as the system being controlled.

[CPT Clay]

Great Post

[PfromHoGro]

B4Ever