Well, there’s no Juan Galt waiting to make the sign of the Bolivar.
I don't see why the U.S. is obligated to pay for somebody else's socialism experiment, especially since we have fools of our own. But I sure wouldn't bet against it.
When you see the lights of Caracas extinguished, you will know we have won..............
Spooky. A former vibrant nation of 30,000,000 people with enough natural resources to thrive but hobbled by communist elites masquerading as more palatable socialists.
Thank you for the ping, Publius. Much appreciated. I was going to say, but on thinking it, it sounded too dismissive and you might think it rude, that I didn’t need to read the article. I thought you might interpret my comment negatively, as though I didn’t want to be pinged.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
But that was my first thought: I don’t even need to read it. I am not in the least bit curious. As other posters have said, it isn’t like we haven’t seen this kind of thing over and over and over again. We have read it in Atlas Shrugged. We have seen it in country over country throughout history. The power and money-hungry people in charge oppress people and appropriate more and more of the country’s wealth while suppressing the ability of people to make more via government intrusion, and piss away the stuff that they steal.
And still-STILL we get absolute IMBECILES world-wide who see this as though it just happened for the first time.
And the first thing out of their mouths is always: “They did it wrong.”
Unbelievable. “They did it wrong.”
Like so many liberal ideas, they build the edifice of their vision on a foundation of faulty premises, and the faulty premise of this is that it can be done at all. So we end up arguing with them about the details “They should have had a better system of setting and communicating prices”, “They made a mistake in analyzing the data”, or “The planning of projects was faulty”.
At this point, in the vision of what should happen, someone slaps them hard across the face and says: “Listen up. Socialism doesn’t work. It can’t work. It is corrupt from the inception, it is an a engine of graft and abuse with no redeeming aspects. It is MADE, no, DESIGNED to eat itself, but ONLY after eating everything and everyone else. Because when you determine what is fair compensation, there is always someone else to whom it isn’t fair. When a person determines how much another person should be able to earn, that person will always want more, and someone else is going to be jealous and envious because that person has MORE than they do. If you say you will give them more, they will WANT more.”
And then we snap back to reality, and the Leftist is still bleating that socialism is a good idea that is waiting for the right person...
If I sound angry, I am. We didn’t see this coming years or decades ago, we’ve seen it our whole life, it is stupid, cruel, and completely unnecessary. Good luck replacing that shattered hip with no anesthetic. Or being hungry enough to boil a leather shoe or belt and try to eat it. One thing I have learned from history, is that when people get hungry enough, they will try to eat nearly anything. Anything. From belts and shoes to other people.
And that, folks, is the final destination of socialism. Looking at an old boot, and wondering if there is anything nutritionally that can be gotten from it.
THAT is the essence of what socialism eventually comes to.