A while back I wrote about why Capitalism is fundamentally good. This doesn’t mean that everyone engaged in Capitalism is good, just that it is based on fundamentally good principles. Specifically, Capitalism is based on doing hard work, doing things that other people need, and having the right to keep what you earn. It causes people to get up early in the morning to feed other people, make things that they need, provide services they want. The more people you help, the more you are rewarded yourself. It is all about trading things you can do for others for things others can do for you. It also results in the most prosperity because it rewards people who are productive and gets the most people working and producing things.
Socialism and Communism, however, are based on evil principles. Here again, this isn’t to say that everyone who practices or advocates for Socialism or Communism is evil. Monks often live in a Communist group. Boy Scout troops also follow a Communist model. It just means that the fundamental principles are evil.
Both Communism, in which everyone owns everything and people use things as they need them, and Socialism, where a government body controls and takes everything that is produced and distributes it based on need, are both based on stealing. They are founded on taking from others based on your needs. It doesn’t matter if someone spent his whole summer planting and tending a field of corn. If you have a need for that corn in a Socialist economy, you can send government agents to his home and have then take that corn to give to you. In a Communist society he would need to place that corn in a central location where whomever wanted could take some whether they provide anything or not.
Note that both Capitalism and Communism would work equally well, given the right people. If you have a group of people willing to do their fair share and then some, it really wouldn’t matter if they traded their labor and goods or they just put what they produced in a central bin and then took what they needed. Everyone would be working and producing about equally. With small groups like a monastery or a Boy Scout Troop where there are strong ethics and principles taught, Communism can work just fine.
In any relatively large group in the real world, however, and without a strong, principle-driven structure, many people tend to look out primarily for themselves. With Capitalism, it is in a person’s best interest to do things for others because that is how they get things. Note they could also just do everything for themselves and keep what they produce, but because different people are skillful in different things, and because some most tools are expensive to acquire, it is more efficient for people to concentrate in their area of strength and then trade for what they need.
With Socialism or Communism, because it is based on taking from other people, people soon discover that it is in their best interest to try to produce less than they receive. Individuals get obsessed with getting “something for nothing,” so they do the absolute least they can while still having their needs met. If they can sit around home and have their food, clothing, and shelter provided, some people will do so. Others may do something just out of boredom or maybe out of a sense of obligation, but there is no incentive to try to do what is most needed. People who like making paintings of dogs may spend their days making paintings of dogs even if there is no one who wants to hang one on their walls.
People who are productive are incentivized not to produce more than they need. If they need $50,000 to supply their needs, they will make that amount and then spend the rest of their time doing hobbies. They know that if they make more it will just be stolen from them, so there is no point. Because some people produce less than they consume, and because even productive people only produce what is needed, there is always a shortage of things.
A final reason that Socialism is particularly evil is that it concentrates wealth and power into the hands of a few people. If everyone grows a garden and then consumes the output, there is no large concentration of wealth. If the produce from all of the gardens is gathered up and then a group of individuals distribute it, that small group will have a tremendous amount of wealth and a tremendous amount of power. They will take a portion of that wealth for themselves, arguing that it is small when compared to the whole even if they are taking the production of 100 people each. They will also use their power to decide who gets produce to get others to give them favors and to control others.
In extreme cases of this, such as in the USSR and North Korea, leaders use this power to fully control large populations. While it is possible for a megalomaniac to control people with troops and guns, it is easier to simply cut off the food from those who stand against them. That is why the many of the most brutal nations on the earth today are Socialist. Note that now, even though the USSR has broken up, there is still huge amounts of corruption in Russia. It all goes back to the implementation of an evil economic system based on stealing.
So while professors in universities may extol the virtues of Socialism and Communism, while talking about evil Capitalists, the truth is just the opposite. It may seem like having a society where the poor are fed by the government is a noble thing, but taking from others by force is wrong. It is better to have a society in which everyone is rewarded for doing what they are willing and able to do, then let people give freely from the excess for those who cannot take care of themselves. For when you require someone who is physically and mentally able to work for his supper, you force him to do good things for other people, even if it is just making them a sandwich. If you give someone everything he needs without any effort on his part, you cheat him of the opportunity to help others.
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