Mary Katherine Ham is posting over at HughHewitt.com. If he let’s her post a little more often, I might forgive him for the Harriet Miers debacle.
She says something about socialism that resonates deeply with my own thoughts:
So, conversations with socialists. I have them. A lot.
I have them with that special brand of socialist-- the 20-something post-collegiate angsty intellectual who has the luxury of saying Fidel Castro "has some pretty good ideas" because, for him, it's not a national talking point enforced at the muzzle of a gun and the blindfolded brink of a ditch. That kind of socialist.
They're good folks. They truly do want the best for people. They think "equal" necessarily equals "good." They, therefore, want equality enforced.
Sometimes during these conversations, my big-government buddies concede, "All right, so maybe it doesn't always work in practice, but it's a nice thought."
I used to concede that point. "Yes, it's a nice idea in theory," I'd say, "But it never works in practice. In fact, it's disastrous, deadly, and scoops out people's souls like so many cold lumps of cosmic ice cream, splatted on the sidewalks of humanity. But you're getting the picture."
In the last couple years, I've had to revise that. The truth is that it is not a nice idea, in theory. Well, not if you actually think about what the theory implies.
Socialism is enforced equality. But someone has to enforce. Someone has to take all that a country of dynamic, amazing, different people has produced and slice it up into dull, government-approved parcels that go to each according to his need. So much for diversity, right?
This means that no one owns anything except for the guy doing the enforcing of equality, who without fail, feels a lot less strongly about his own equality with the proletariat than he does about the rabble's equality with each other. That's how Fidel Castro ended up on the Forbe's list of richest people.
This guy inevitably gets a little testy when folks step out of line by wanting to own the things they earn, thereby cutting down on his net worth. And by testy, I mean blood-thirsty and murdery.
Mary Katherine has it exactly right. Beware Chavez-istas. You won’t like the future.
16 comments:
Capitalism, dear Tlaloc, has never sanctioned the intentional and cold-blooded killing of tens of millions of human beings because they committed the sin of disagreement.
I think you might also find some challengers to your sweeping and basically dishonest statement that capitalism has failed. It has produced more freedom and prosperity for more people than any other macro-system in the world. Why? Because it is, in fact, a synonym for freedom.
The notion that MAD is a critique of capitalism is, well, mad. The Soviets were aggressive from the moment the second world war ended. I think it would have been silly to let them build a dominant offensive force and hope for their benevolence in not using it.
Wrong, simply wrong. Pre-WWII, the U.S. was largely isolationist. It took a lot of convincing and demonstration to get Americans into the fight. The only thing that got us into the massive chess match of world domination (or ultimately, on our part) liberation, was the clearly aggressive behavior of the Soviets. The old playground saw is a true one: They started it. Of course, the George Bushism is also true: We finished it to the great happiness of people like, say, the Eastern Europeans.
Quite right, JC. Capitalism is the economic system that naturally arises from the business activities of free persons.
Funny, but no one is actually pointing to socialist countries while continuing this argument. The Soviet Union and Cuba are Communist. They're a funky combination of fascism and socialism, the perversion of an ideal that, while nice in theory, totally ignores the nature of human interaction.
One might point out that the American Revolution was a revolt, in part, against a systemic combination of capitalism and monarchy. Is the American Revolution a refutation of capitalism as much as monarchy? No. Nor is an escape from Cuba a refutation of socialism, but rather a unique and only vaguely socialist system (Communism).
No one's actually arguing the point in hand, and it's a fundamental flaw within the conservative argument: conflating socialism with Communism.
Haven't seen you in a while, James...glad you're still around.
First off, it's good to see James back. I was afraid I mortally offended him by suggesting he should be a conservative because of his fondness for westerns other than Brokeback Mountain.
Second, Tlaloc, you don't understand capitalism. It can't exist in the presence of prerogative power by the government. What you are referring to under Hussein and Pinochet is simply dictatorship with some room for free enterprise to operate.
Now, James would come back by noting that there are socialist regimes that don't kill the dissenters. And so there are. They are basically the Western European states and Sweden. I think the deliverances of economics are that those economies will not be able to continue indefinitely without economic liberalization (which means free markets, not nationalization).
The bottom line would be something like this:
Dictatorial socialism -- Mao's China, Soviet Union, Cuba -- bad, deadly bad.
Democratic socialism -- Sweden, Germany, France (all mixed with significantly free markets unlike the above) -- not deadly bad, maybe economically bad in the long run, but not terrible as a certainty. Maybe even acceptable as a governing approach.
Great descriptions, Hunter.
Although if you think of a "sliding scale" between capitalism and socialism (ie, the amount of state control over the economy), isn't the good 'ol USofA just a tad bit less socialist than Western Europe?
IMHO, there is a point on the capitalism-socialism continuum that is optimal. USA is closer to that point than Western Europe.
Hong Kong is closer to it than USA.
We're agreed that there has to be some mixture. I think completely unregulated capitalism is beyond my faith.
However, T is wrong about capitalism being invented. I think it is actually the one economic approach that is au naturale.
Tlaloc says (sarcastically I think): "Right, because natural humans never shared resources."
You state this with the assumption that under "capitalism" resources are somehow NOT shared. (Please correct me if I misunderstood your post).
I believe that one underlying theme of this thread is that "capitalism" does a much better job at allocating scarce resources than does "socialism".
No, again, T. Public choice economics spells out the ideal capitalism. Some things, like the air or a river or stream don't yield well to private ownership, so they are shared and regulated according to some agreed code. But other things can effectively be owned, manipulated, and made to increase in value. Those things are part of the unfettered free market. And it works great.
The point of the lady I was quoting is that socialism has inherent totalitarian tendencies. Somebody has to do all that leveling.
"Haven't seen you in a while, James...glad you're still around."
I appreciate the sentiment, Matt. I was in Albuquerque for two weeks visiting the soon-to-be in-laws. Not a lot of time to jump online and I had to use my laptop to steal the neighbors wireless LAN connection in order to check my email when the opportunity arose (which was rare). If you're ever in New Mexico, I can now highly recommend Garduno's in Albuquerque and La Fonda in Santa Fe for the best Mexican food ever.
Since this discussion is about a comment away from this, and we're talking about some sort of a balance between socialism and capitalism, or capitalism with regulation, whichever you prefer to call the US, I'll mention this: Within capitalism, there are many economic approaches, a fact which isn't emphasised nearly enough.
Labor economics (Department of Labor) used to be vastly different and much more influential than it is now. Yet, all I read of and hear of now is sell-side economics. There are other approaches, but these two stand out, and seemingly aren't complementary or converging.
This is despite the facts that tlaloc mentioned where the US, being the wealthiest country, is behind most other developing countries in poverty rates and infant mortality rates to throw in healthcare. It's even behind in crime rates for all this talk about the 2nd ammendment, but that is another topic.
You would have to be mad to deny the problems facing the US economy and politics. Labor and it's declining wages being the biggest one. EU socialism seems closer to solving the first two problems than the US is given all the projected ballooning costs in social security, medicare, over the next decades. My point is, If there is a trade off between economic growth and the welfare of the general public, it's time to choose the welfare of the general public, and bring back the old Labor Dept. and have a progressive tax system. Sell side economics is perhaps the epitome of an already increasing income gap and the old mantra "rich get richer and the poor get poorer."
As for the European social model being sustainable, there are plenty of books on how the EU is already and will probably continue to be as great or a greater economic superpower than the US. The EU is, I believe, nearer to that equlibirum between captialism and socialism than either Hong Kong or the US is.
I will have to disagree with the assertion that capitalism is au naturale, when we can't seem to find the right amount of regulation, or the right economic foundation. I guess I am attacking the neoliberal economic POV. Regardless, the au naturale distinction is much more fitting to anarchism, read Chomsky's talks on anarchism for more.
Go ahead, tell me how capitalism has been sell side economics in disguise...
This post and it's comments have been especially good reading.
I'm not sure why it is so many people have such difficulty separating "socialism" from "totalitarianism." Capitalism may not sanction mass killings, but capitalists have, in various places at various times. The coldly-calculated failure to re-engineer the gas tank of the Pinto isn't exactly a shining moment for capitalism, nor was child labor, nor banana politics in Central America. It's little comfort that capitalist totalitarians may have been less successful at murder.
Ernie Cortes may be right: The issue is survival. Survivors can fight oppression. Philosophically, isn't a kid better off to survive childhood (Cuba has the lowest infant mortality rate in the Americas) and learn to read (Cuba has the highest literacy rate in the Americas), to take advantage of capitalism? Born in Cuba, immigrate to the U.S. . . . many do.
Can't we do better?
Americans still dream, despite the (temporary, we hope) Stalinesque affectations in the current regime. Some of us dream of a time when American kids have at least the same good health care that a Cuban baby has, or the same chance at good preventive health care that prevents heart disease that a Canadian citizen has, or the same opportunities for out-of-wedlock kids that Swedes used to grant.
Is it necessary to sacrifice our neighbors and our children to preserve economic choice? Are not the poor our neighbors?
For all the advantages of capitalism, it may have limits. If, as some predict, oil production peaks in the next 24 months, we may discover that the faults of capitalism are much greater than we thought, and much greater than we can deal with in laissez-faire style.
Socialism doesn't sanction the intentional and cold-blooded kiling of tens of millions of human beings for disagreement, either. The murders are done by totalitarians driven by something other than economic theory.
What will we say in quick retort to socialists if, in ten years, the Chinese complete their turn to capitalism, but maintain their murderous ways with dissenters and petty criminals? Will we say the organs available for transplant justify the means?
Post a Comment