The Great (and Not So Great) Teach Us About Socialism
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Posted on 08/15/2025 3:24:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Socialism (communism), as is being packaged in New York City, can...work?
For a season. The appeal to “affordability” and “free stuff” has a strong draw. The glossy brochure presents free transportation, state-run grocery stores, rent freezes, and the confiscation of unused housing.
Of course, long-term, these ideas have been tried before andhave failed miserably, as the Kansas City–run grocery store just failed, and as state-run stores failed in the Soviet Union.
Seizing the means of production and price controls, as Zohran Mamdani has proposed, are responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese, Cambodians, Venezuelans, Cubans, and more.
Although the end result is always the same (regardless of who tries it), the early stages of these seizures and state-run control can be successful. Here’s how.
Free-market capital hasn’t (yet) had a chance to escape. Many wealthy persons (including liberals) will eventually pull their cash out of New York, but with declining real estate valuations and almost certain exit taxes, many will hesitate to pull the trigger.
Some others in the capital class can garner favor within the apparat, so they’re willing [for a time] to provide some funding to help set up the system that they then have a hand in controlling. These apparatchiks eventually take more than they contribute, resulting in declining capital to fund the Party, always resulting in collapse.
The financial inputs (taxes) to run the city or state have not yet impacted workers lower down the food chain (the middle class). Eventually, with the wealthy leaving, the working class begin to take the brunt of the funding obligation. The lower middle class and eventually the middle class are then disincentivized to work, as they recognize that their neighbor gets food, housing, transportation without working.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
The wealthy will leave. The middle class will have no incentive to produce. The system will eventually certainly collapse...but there is a lag period where some of the promises of utopia can be achieved.
Wealth can be confiscated; debt can be pushed into outbound quarters or years. The phase of worker disincentivization can take a year or two, before the funding outpaces the revenues.
Socialism (communism) can work...for a season. The problem, as articulated by Beta Metani Marashi is that “you can vote yourself into communism, but you have to shoot your way out.”
To leave is to lose some money, but to stay is to lose it all, and also to become a class enemy scapegoat who must be eliminated by any means necessary. That’s not a prediction, it’s a cold historical observation.
For leaving IL I paid a $6,000 “exit tax” that I did not owe. It was served on my GA employer the last day that tax decisions for that year could be appealed. By the time I knew about it, I could do nothing.
How many people employed in NY will have to pay an exit tax when they leave?
Socialism absolutely works until there’s no more money to steal.
The country tried that during covid, failed.
Socialism only works until you run out of other peoples’ money — Margaret Thatcher
I think the controversy is off track.
Instead of government run, low cost food outlets, why not make them totally free distribution centers for the voting bloc groups? Billionaires will be taxed to subsidize totally free groceries for the groups that vote Socialist.
No need to worry about high or low efficiency of foods on sale or shelves being full. Just everything is free.
Amazingly the food idea was in the novel (by Terry Southern) and the movie (with Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr).
People form mobs and clear all the shelves in a few minutes.
Well, morondami says he can do it the correct way. 🖕
The novel and movie name:
The Magic Christian.
Sorry.
Socialism works really well.
For the people running it.
it only works when you have capitalism supporting it
Socialism is nothing more then paradise for lay abouts it has that magic word in it FREE.
We know how free works someone else pays for it.
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