Socialism or capitalism
The second leg of my argument for a country in peril is lack of freedom to compete. The world is a global marketplace. To maintain our economic health as nation we must be able to compete in the global marketplace. The reason why a free society like ours excels is because it rewards contribution. If there is something that needs to be fixed, there is a rush to find a solution. If there is something desirable to be obtained or attained, there is a rush to provide it. When we have mice, competitors vie for providing a better mouse trap. But these days there are many who put down competition and our children are taught that it is bad. What happened? Well in short “political correctness” and “social justice”! Social justice promotes the fallacious idea that equity means that goods should be distributed equally. If we were truly educating our children, which we are not, most people would know enough about reality to realize that almost all attributes are distributed in a gaussian (normal or bell curve) distribution. Since the attributes of people are distributed normally, then their potential for contribution (ability) will be normally distributed. That is, about two thirds are clustered around the average (mean) and about one sixth excel and about one sixth underperform. Their actual contribution is dependent on ability and a few other factors such as work ethic, motivation, and even prejudices in the marketplace. Consequently, the contribution of individuals is not equal and since in a free market society the rewards are a function of contribution, the rewards are not equal either. Nor should they be! The efforts to equalize rewards, redistribution by government, is counterproductive. First it stifles competition; who wants to work hard and make sacrifices just to have their earnings taxed and given to those who refused to work hard or make sacrifices. Second it violates the principles that our country was founded on: everyone is created equal with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Redistribution infringes on both our liberty and our right to the pursuit of happiness. The conclusion from this is that equal distribution of goods in a free society is fallacious and teaching that it is something to be strived for leads to disastrous thinking and policy. Government’s role should simply be to insure that the one sixth who are incapable of performing satisfactorily are provided a safety net and perhaps the funding for the safety net should come from the one sixth who are blessed with greater than average ability. We should be encouraging competition not thwarting it. Sports and games are important and a free system is essential.
Socialism is based on Marx fallacious assumption that the outcome of work should be equally distributed. This is fallacious because it fails to take into account the extraordinary contribution of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur comes up with the idea, takes all of the risk, provides all of the capital and provides the leadership to make it happen. The socialism experiments have all been dismal failures. It is predictable. If you take away the incentive (rewards) for making the sacrifices necessary for greater achievement, you get less achievement. When you do not have enough to divide; dividing equally just spreads the pain. This was true at Jamestown and in the Soviet Union. Jamestown almost starved to death before changing to a competitive system. The Soviet Union survived about 70 years of scarcity before it imploded. China is still surviving but only because it is a totalitarian state and only for a time. The classic comparative example is North and South Korea. North is socialist and starving; South is capitalist and thriving.
My conclusion is that it may be too late. We have one or two generations (at least) now from a failed education system and one or two generations where ‘social justice’ and ‘political correctness’ were taught and competition and achievement were maligned. I don’t see how you recover from it because about half of voters today do not believe in capitalism. It is so simple; socialism destroys competition and thereby creates no wealth albeit the scarcity is distributed equally. Capitalism thrives on competition. Capitalism creates tremendous wealth, and although distributed unequally still provides more for all. It is so simple but not grasped by many. Maybe too many!
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