In a Free Market economy, the cost of goods is
self-regulated and follows the Laws of Economics. The Law of Supply and Demand
allows consumers to control the prices. If prices rise on any goods, consumers
are free to select other goods to replace it. If beef goes up, we buy chicken
until beef prices go down.
With Socialism, the cost of goods is regulated by the
government. In the US the cost of Healthcare, Government and Education are
unsustainable.
The Difference in How Socialism and Free Markets Work in
the Real World, by Sebastian Gorka, 2/1/19, Daily Signal.
If the future of the
nation were a function of logic, then conservatives would have a very easy job.
No debate would be
needed, really. In the choice between the two competing models Judeo-Christian
civilization has given us, with socialist arguments for “big government” on the
one side and a market-oriented system that favors the freedoms of the
individual over the powers of the state on the other, there would be no
contest.
In fact, it would indeed
be a formal “no contest,” as only one of the models has ever been realized in
the real world in which we live.
Adam Smith, Friedrich
Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman may have had impeccable
credentials in terms of theory, but the whole point of their work is that it
occurred within the reality of functioning free markets.
The Laffer Curve was
never condemned to remain locked within an ivory tower, solely to be read on
the pages of a peer-reviewed journal. The ideas of these philosophical and
economic greats were deployed in real time, in the real world, by
democratically elected statesmen and leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher.
These ideas actually
worked in practice. The same cannot be said of the theories of Karl Marx,
Friedrich Engels, or Mao Zedong.
Since “The Communist
Manifesto” and the later “Das Kapital” were published, nowhere on the planet
has the system therein envisaged ever actually been implemented as designed.
Oh, yes, more than 40
countries as culturally diverse as the Soviet Union, Venezuela, and Vietnam
have called themselves “socialist” states or said they were implementing the
theories of Marx, Mao, and Lenin.
But not one of them ever
achieved the vaunted goal of the “Workers’ Paradise.” Not one of these
experiments ever resulted in the objective Marx declared for his theory in
1875: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Not
one.
Instead, wherever
socialism was tried, from Moscow to Beijing, from Havana to Pyongyang, the
world witnessed the same result: oppression of the masses, power and wealth for
the party nomenclature, and most often an eventual economic collapse. This was
so even in the country of communism’s birth, the Soviet Union, which imploded
on Christmas Day 1991 under the weight of Marxism’s inherent contradictions.
The Conservative Response - As a result, Marxism and socialism have just remained
theories, while democracy and capitalism became unbelievably vibrant realities from
Great Britain to Poland, from America to Japan, from Estonia to India.
These realities have
taken poor countries such as Singapore and turned them, in the space of less
than two generations, into international success stories that Marx, horrified
as he was by the smokestacks and exploitation of the textile mills of the
Industrial Age, could never have imagined.
So how should
conservatives respond to the cries of the millennials who so desperately wanted
Sen. Bernie Sanders to become the 45th president, and who tell us: “What about
Scandinavia and the Nordic states? What about Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, what
about the socialist states of Europe that provide equality and welfare?”
Well, yes, these states
value the individual over the collective, and they do provide incredibly
generous welfare nets. But this has nothing to do with “command economies” or
one-party states.
In fact, Danish Prime
Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has had enough of this repeated calumny of the
nations of Northern Europe. During a recent speech here in the United States,
he said “some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of
socialism.”
But, Rasmussen said, “I
would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned
economy. Denmark is a market economy.” He added that his country is “a
successful market economy with much freedom to pursue your dreams and live your
life as you wish.” Sound familiar?
The truth is, the Nordic
and Scandinavian nations have built incredibly equitable societies with
provisions for the needy because of their decidedly un-socialist history, and
thanks to the free market. All of them have histories as successful capitalist
economies, often based on shared centuries of mercantilist competition, with
Norway additionally being one of the world’s largest exporters of oil, allowing
it to fund its generous benefits.
And truth be told, the
largesse that the peoples of these states have shown themselves by erecting
welfare states built upon the profits of the past is straining their national
coffers today, as their populations age and the costs of their welfare programs
eat away at the limited taxes the state can collect. As a result, expect to
hear more statements such as the one made by the Danish prime minister.
‘One More Try’ - But
what of the other riposte: that all of the past’s socialist “experiments”
failed simply because the wrong people implemented them? The logic here being
that all you need is the right “elite” to make Marx’s dream become reality, not
equality to be realized. Maybe. Or maybe not.
As Einstein taught us,
systematic repetition of failure accompanied by the expectation of getting a
different result is the definition of insanity. After a century of trying, with
hundreds of millions of people used as guinea pigs, where is the realistic and
moral justification for “just one more try?”
Most importantly, look
at the facts that left-wing historians gave us in “The Black Book of Communism,” wherein they provided an accounting
of all the attempts to create functioning Marxist states. The authors concluded
that attempts to realize the “socialist state” led to the programmatic deaths
of over 100 million human beings, from the gulags of Siberia to the killing
fields of Cambodia.
As a result, one more
try at Marx’s idyll would seem not only immoral, but to dishonor the memories
of those killed in the name of a man-made utopia.
So how it is that the
conservative argument for the American dream is still not triumphant? How is it
that of all the Democrats who ran for office in the November midterm elections,
more than 40 proudly declared themselves “socialists,” including the new face
of the party, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
And how is it that
according to the latest annual poll by the Victims of Communism Memorial
Foundation, a stunning 52 percent of millennials would like to live in a
socialist or communist America? How is this possible?
Simple. More than ever,
politics today is a function less of verities than emotional connection. A
sense of authenticity over the rectitude of any suggested policy.
It is no accident that
President Donald Trump was the star of his own reality TV show for 14 seasons
before he ran in a presidential campaign during which he defeated 16 rivals for
the GOP nomination, 14 of whom were established political names.
More importantly, as
members of a philosophical community that shares the same commitment to the
economic and political principles that define our view of America, we have
failed utterly to understand the role of the dreaded word “narrative.”
Square One - Most
Americans are apolitical and couldn’t tell you the difference between Matt
Drudge and Paul Krugman. They want to be able to pay the bills at the end of
the month, and to feel secure about their future and the future of their
families. But even the most apolitical American citizen associates certain key
characteristics with each side of the political divide.
The left is seen as having
an almost monopolistic hold on compassion, on caring for those who need help
the most. The right today is identified by only negatives: lack of compassion,
greed, exploitative big business. Even capitalism is understood as a dirty
word, redolent of cronyism and unaccountable profiteering.
For those who not only
believe but know that free markets and democracy have empowered hundreds of
millions of people to live freely and climb out of poverty, in fact more than
any other political philosophy has ever done, we must go back to square one.
Our challenge is not one
of facts and figures, but emotions, of talking in ways that connect to souls
held hostage to the utopian panaceas of false prophets and idols.
The ancient Greeks who
carved the foundation stones of our future civilization, who invented political
philosophy, wrote almost exclusively about one thing: What is the “good?” What
is a “good society,” and what makes for a “good” man or woman?
In the years since the
end of the Cold War and the presidency of Ronald Reagan, conservatives have
allowed the pernicious and deadly ideas of the left to become exclusively
associated with the “good.”
Our job is simple but
hard. We must show—not tell—our fellow Americans that the good is inextricably
tied to freedom, to small government, to free markets, and to earned success,
and that circumscribed lives, big government, constrained economies, and
federal handouts destroy the soul and sap the life blood of healthy societies.
With his capacity to
connect to the forgotten men and women of America, to the unemployed steel
workers of the Rust Belt, with his ability to win over black communities in
numbers we have not seen in decades, Donald Trump has opened a window for the
conservative movement of the 21st century.
Now it is our job to
convince fellow Americans that the principles of our Founding can provide for
them better than any version of socialism ever could, that American
exceptionalism is real and “good,” and that all of us can be a part of the
American dream no matter who we are.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody
GA Tea Party Leader
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