You Can't Argue against Socialism's 100 Percent Record of Failure [Boom!]

...First, as much as the authors insist that previous examples of socialism were not “really” socialist, none of them can tell us what exactly they would do differently. Rather than providing at least a rough outline of how “their” version of socialism would work in practice, the authors escape into abstraction, and talk about lofty aspirations rather than tangible institutional characteristics.

“Charting new destinations for humanity” and “democratizing the economy” are nice buzzphrases, but what does this mean, in practice? How would “the people” manage “their” economy jointly? Would we all gather in Hyde Park, and debate how many toothbrushes and how many screwdrivers we should produce? How would we decide who gets what? How would we decide who does what? What if it turns out that we don’t actually agree on very much?

These are not some trivial technical details that we can just leave until after the revolution. These are the most basic, fundamental questions that a proponent of any economic system has to be able to answer. Almost three decades have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall—enough time, one should think, for “modern” socialists to come up with some ideas for a different kind of socialism. Yet here we are. After all those years, they have still not moved beyond the buzzword stage.

Secondly, the authors do not seem to realize that there is nothing remotely new about the lofty aspirations they talk about, and the buzzphrases they use. Giving “the people” democratic control over economic life has always been the aspiration, and the promise, of socialism. It is not that this has never occurred to the people who were involved in earlier socialist projects. On the contrary: that was always the idea. There was never a time when socialists started out with the express intention of creating stratified societies led by a technocratic elite. Socialism always turned out that way, but not because it was intended to be that way...

With each passing generation of useful idiots that come and go socialism/communism needs to be repackaged and marketed as something new and REVOLUTIONARY. Just like those sleazy late night infomercials and free lunch seminars pushing the same old get rich quick scams as new ways to achieve instant wealth and lifetime income streams. Such as buying real estate with no $$$ down, making a killing in stocks regardless of market conditions. Investing thousands in the latest snake oil while building a downline or some other unworkable MLM/pyramid racket. They’ll tell you other systems failed because they were implemented wrong by the wrong people but THEY have a proven system that works. (Those 4 deadly words)THIS TIME IT’S DIFFERENT! And like the red diaper doper babies and hippies before them, the millenials, for all their pseudo intellectualism fall for this horseshiite like so many brainwashed little puppies.

The definition of “socialism” is slippery. IMHO the best definition of socialism is “cynicism towards society and concomitant naiveté towards government.”
Why is "naiveté towards government" concomitant to "cynicism towards society?” Because (as Thomas Paine explains in the first two paragraphs of Common Sense) skepticism towards society is the sole justification for government.
“Conservatives” are skeptical about society, but also skeptical of government. Socialists are cynical about society, and therefore they are naive about the “side effects” of government “solutions” to societal “problems.”
Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under 'communism' and 'fascism'. As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, 'the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany.’ No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom. What is promised to us as the Road to Freedom is in fact the Highroad to Servitude. For it is not difficult to see what must be the consequences when democracy embarks upon a course of planning. The goal of the planning will be described by some such vague term as 'the general welfare'. There will be no real agreement as to the ends to be attained, and the effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go: with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all. ____________— F A Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (May, 1945 Reader’s Digest Condensed Version)

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