Real Socialism

People hate America's big disparities in wealth. It's a reason why, among young people, socialism is as popular as capitalism.

The Democratic Socialists of America want a country based on "freedom, equality and solidarity." That sure sounds good.

One reason for socialism's continued appeal is linguist Noam Chomsky. For generations, his work has taught students that capitalism is "a grotesque catastrophe."

I assumed the fall of the Soviet Union would put an end to such misinformation. It did -- for about a month.

But since then, the lust for socialism has come back strong. Today, Chomsky says that the Soviet Union "was about as remote from socialism as you could imagine."

"Absurd!" responds economist Ben Powell, author of "Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World."

When the Soviets made private businesses illegal, says Powell, "that's about as close as the world ever saw" to pure socialism.

Now that the Soviet Union is gone, MSNBC anchor Ali Velshi says, "there is no true socialist country that exists."

Venezuela was once Latin America's richest country. Now it's the poorest. Many in the media claim that its fall has "nothing to do with socialism," just "poor governance."

John Oliver says, "Chavez's programs could have been sustainable if he pursued a sound economic policy."

"Yeah," laughs Powell. "Sustainable if he had a sound economic policy called capitalism."

I push back. "Why does it have to be capitalism?" Why not socialism without bad management?

"That's the nature of socialism!" Powell replies. "Their economic policies fail to adjust to reality because economic reality evolves every day. It's millions of decentralized entrepreneurs and consumers making fine-tuning adjustments."

Powell notes that in our capitalist society, when COVID-19 hit, businesses quickly adjusted. Restaurants switched to takeout and delivery. They built outdoor patios with heat lamps. Supermarkets opened early so the elderly could shop with less risk. Alcohol companies started producing hand sanitizer. Ford used its 3D printers to make face masks.

The media whined about "lack of federal direction," but no central authority could direct all those individual adjustments in thousands of different places. In fact, federal direction would have prevented it.

"In a socialist economy, you get a one-size-fits-all adjustment," adds Powell. "You miss out on this learning process where entrepreneurs copy others when they see things successful and stop doing it when it's not." By contrast, "In a market economy, everybody's little adjustments get tested, and we get to see what works."

In America, Blockbuster video was a great success. But then Netflix offered something better -- no driving to a store, no late fees. Because Blockbuster didn't immediately adjust, it went bankrupt.

"In a socialist economy, every adjustment needs to be commanded," says Powell. "Communicate it down and get everybody to do the right thing. That's impossible."

That's why under socialism, shortages are routine. In Venezuela, there's so little food for sale that Venezuelans have lost weight.

Yet, "journalists" at Vox produced a video titled, "The Collapse of Venezuela, Explained," without mentioning socialism even once. Vox's explanation for Venezuela's fall: "Oil prices plummeted."

"The oil price is a complete distraction," says an exasperated Powell. "There's plenty of countries that depend on oil revenue. When oil prices went down, people there didn't start losing weight. That just happened in Venezuela."

Some claim Venezuela and Cuba's people struggle mainly because of America's economic sanctions and embargo.

"They certainly don't help the people," says Powell, "but it's an afterthought as a reason for their suffering."

The U.S. only sanctioned a few Venezuelan officials and their operations -- not the country as a whole.

In Cuba, Powell points out: "They drive around 1950s U.S. cars ... but there's no U.S. Navy destroyers prevent Kia, Fiat and whoever else around the world from sending them cars. The reason for their suffering is they have an economic system that can't deliver."

You can actually do that very safely with UK 3 pin plugs.

The circuit won’t close if the third pin isn’t fully in. I used to do TV repairs with the sets plugged in and switched on.

The real issue with your fork in a light switch analogy is it’s the wrong way round.

The epitome of American cilture is compartmentalised knowledge and utter distrust of anybody’s ability, leading to “caution, hot coffee is hot” level of idiot-proofing to avoid litigation.

You don’t get that crap in Russian, Chinese, German or British culture.

British grease monkeys in the Armed Forces are generalists who can do most anything if asked “fix that doohickey with five components over there, we assume you know how to use a spanner”.

But the American equivalent is to have five different guys following rote instructions on which way round to turn their spanners, on which bolts, to take apart the one bit of kit out of the five that they’re allowed to touch.

That is idiocracy. Your left hand doesn’t know what the right hand does, or how. It’s made you wide open to systematic fraud and abuse, you all know it, and that’s why you don’t trust anybody who can’t promise to solve every complex problem you’ve got with an inane four word slogan.

It is also why your military grade security systems are so shot full of access holes that every motivated teenager in commie land, since Matthew Broderick in Wargames, has been able to run rings round your tech defenses with next to no formal technical training.

To correct your analogy - commies know how to put a fork in a socket when to do it, and why. That’s what makes them a threat to the USA.

By contrast the USA is in the habit of not knowing how to do it correctly, not trusting anybody that could do it correctly, and then convincing itself that “it can’t and shouldn’t be done” to the point of putting “ do not use forks in power sockets” on the packaging of cutlery boxes.

There is a Wealth Gap in the US that keeps getting wider. We are at the point where history shows us that social unrest is around the corner. We also seem to want to put race labels on this to demonize one side.

So watch for Socialism to be sold as “Racial Equality” and like clean water who could be against that?

Add to that fraud enabling election laws on an industrial scale and presto there we are.

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