The lies of Socialism

Now that I have exhausted the planks in the Libertarian platform I was considering what to write on next, and I have plenty of options. Obviously current events are always plentiful, relevant and useful, but also overdone. It seems the vast majority of blogs are just peoples ranting about the problems of the moment.

The Libertarian party, and myself, take a longer view of the world. We don't see isolated events, but an avalanche of consequences from the actions taken by those with a poor guiding philosophy. We Libertarians propose a broader view of the world. I decided to continue in that vein. I'm planning to do some current event oriented posts to be sure, but that is not the major thrust of this blog. This blog is about the philosophy of Libertarianism in its pure state first, and applied to our political situations second.

With that in mind, I shall take on one of the arch enemies of Libertarian though, that is, socialism. Socialism is an exceptionally virulent flaws philosophy because it has just the right mix of feel-good ideas to cover over the unbroken history of failure. Every generation that embraces socialism, or worse, communism, has to learn again that it is based on lies that generate nothing but mediocrity and stagnation at best, and horrific misery at worst.

I shall start with a working definition of socialism, so those reading may better understand these thoughts. I shall use the definition I found on wikipedia: "Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of an egalitarian society."

This definition leaves out some critical points. Taken by itself you might be tempted to conclude that socialism is not all that bad, and perhaps is even a good thing. This is because the first lie of socialism is that of production being freely given to the state or otherwise collectivized. The state must enforce this status by coercion. People in general do not grant the product of their lives to anyone else without a threat or the expectation of some reward. The reward in this case is freedom from penalty. This is not to say that charity never happens, for it is clear that charity exists and indeed Americans are exceptionally charitable people. And there is the crux of the first lie, the lie of omission, the lie that says people will, in general, willingly surrender their production. It takes only a cursory observation to see that people will not, and the harder people look, the more this situation is confirmed.

Why does the IRS even have an enforcement division if people are, in general, willing to give up their life to the collective? It exists because the government must take from the people by force, or the threat of force.

The second lie is that of seeking an egalitarian society. This is pure poppycock. History shows us that people intentionally seek what is best for themselves. This means a few key things with respect to socialism. First, those people saying they wish everyone to be equal probably, at some level, likely believe it, but they are conveniently forgetting the human condition of scarcity of resources.

Pure equality, wherein everyone has exactly the same share of the available resources, would mean that to improve ones own situation you would have to either increase the available resources for everyone, reduce the number of people in the system, or apportion the resources unequally. It would be improper to apportion them unequally, so that is ruled out. It would be morally reprehensible to reduce the number of people, so that is ruled out. Thus that leaves only increasing the supply as a reasonable answer. However, some resources are fixed, such as land, there can exist no personal improvement in a socialist system.

Also complicating the search for equality is the human diversity of opinion. Whereas some might very highly value a given resource, others may have no use for it at all. What then is a system of pure equality supposed to do? Pretend for a moment that each day every human is allotted a ration of peanuts. It makes no difference how large the allotment is. For some people it will never be enough, and for others it will be far too much. Now consider the person who is allergic to peanuts. What of them? Only an exceptionally unfair mind would say that the allergic person must stockpile the peanuts, or worse, discard them, and derive no use from them at all. Thus there will exist a situation wherein one person will have a need unmet by the system, and another will have a surplus provided by the system, and yet that same system will resist allowing them to trade. For free trade will unbalance the equality.

These two things, scarcity and perceived value, are some of the rocks upon when the ship of Socialism always runs aground.

But the lying is contained only in those areas. There is another hidden lie, the lie of the collective. There is no such thing as a collective. No matter how much we beat our chests and proclaim we care for the whole, we care for ourselves more. Self preservation is the highest form of self interest. This is not to state that people will not sometimes do things that seem to be in the best interest of others. Indeed, there is more than enough evidence to show that people will do heroic things, often to their own demise, coming to the aid or rescue of others. But in all those cases the person either did not expect the full consequences, or could not live with the consequences of inaction.

There is no common good, only individuals. The common good is a statistic, not a data point. Statistics hide the humanity behind the numbers. With that in mind, any average, arithmetic mean or median will have included in it values higher and lower that the middle. The only way to raise the value is to increase the numbers at the low end. Recall the fact of scarcity and it is obvious that the only way to improve the statistic is to chop down the big numbers and use those resources to inflate the lower ones. But these are not mere numbers. These are people's lives.

The failed attempt at justification is made with phrases like "They can afford it" or "They don't need it" or even "It's not fair" while simply overlooking that the "they" in those ideas are real people and the action involved is a real crime. (It must be a crime, for taking someone's property by force has always been regarded as theft.)

A persons life is a series of thoughts and actions. Those thoughts and actions result in a persons production. No two people are identical. Some people will produce more things of value than others. Therefore, if equality is the goal, then the only recourse is to take some of the "overproduction" from some and give it to others. Never mind the fact that this is slavery, for the producers are at the receiving end of a whip, being made to support others with no benefit to themselves.

The final result of this system can be nothing more than a downward spiral in production and innovation. The human is a highly adaptive creature and when the cause of self interest is muted, as I've shown here must exist in a socialist system, then the incentive to be productive and innovative is also diminished. As this mindset takes hold in the producers the "common good" will inevitably drop until it reaches the threshold of mere subsistence.

These are the lies of socialism. They need to be pointed out to everyone without exception. The Libertarian party rejects all of these lies. Of course, nature abhors a vacuum and so we cannot idly stand by and denounce this system without proposing an alternative. The Libertarian party steadfastly promotes capitalism, personal property, free trade and self interest in its place. Whereas the socialists run aground of the realities of the human creature and condition, the Libertarian party harnesses them to fuel a better tomorrow for everyone.

That has to be the irony of all irony's. The socialist system purports to wish to raise the collective good, but by its means only depressed it. The Libertarian philosophy wishes to promote the individual good and by natural consequence of its means promotes the statistical common good as well.