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THE TRUTH ABOUT WHY DEMOCRATS EMBRACE SOCIALISM - Here's Why | Thomas Sowell
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More recently during the election, all
this enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders was
taking place while people in Venezuela
under a socialist government with lots
of oil. A rich country, a rich and
natural resources country, rich natural
resources country were starving. They
were breaking into into grocery stores
desperate to get food. They're they're
going into other countries to try to
find something to eat. Uh and and it it
and the two things never came together.
and they saw socialism as an idea.
Socialism has always been a wonderful
sounding idea. It's only when you put it
into practice that you discover that
there are real problems.
The most spectacularly successful
political doctrine in the 20th century
was Marxism based on the implicit
presumption that differences in wealth
were due to capitalists growing rich by
keeping the workers poor through
exploitation. Now what was wrong with
that assumption? Well, it's it it
sounded good like so many others but but
again and you speak as a former Marxist.
You were a Marxist. You considered
yourself a Marxist for some years. Oh
dur during the McCarthy era by the way.
Uh I was swimming against the stream but
but
uh it simply was never put to any test.
Now the test I suggest there is a simple
one but it is a test and and if it's
true that that uh the rich are rich
because they're keeping the poor poor
then in a country with lots of
billionaires usually correspondently
have great amounts of poor people. But
if you but if you compare the actual
data uh there are more billionaires in
the United States than in Africa and the
Middle East put together. And yet the
standard of living in and of the poor in
the United States is higher than that of
people in the in Africa and the Middle
East. So by by that simple standard, it
just doesn't hold up. There are problems
with the theory. A recent Yuggov survey,
the proportion of baby boomers, that's
my group, who hold favorable views of
communism is just 4%. The proportion of
millennials, that's my kids and your
grandkids who hold favorable views of
communism is 19%.
Yes. Roughly one in five young Americans
now holds a favorable view of communism.
What do you do with that
datim? Well, I I think I I I get very
pessimistic.
Uh I more recently during the election
all this enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders
was taking place while people in
Venezuela under a socialist government
with lots of oil. A rich country rich
and natural resources. Rich and natural
resources country were starving. They
were breaking into into grocery stores
to get desperate to get food. They're
they're going into other countries to
try to find something to eat. uh and and
and it it and and the two things never
came together and they saw socialism as
an idea. Socialism has always been a
wonderful sounding idea. It's only when
you put it into practice that you
discover that there are real problems.
All right. It is far easier to concent
again I'm quoting from intellectuals in
society. It is far easier to concentrate
power than to concentrate knowledge.
Yes. What bearing has that got on the
influence that intellectuals have over
society as a whole?
because they they believe that since
knowledge is concentrated in people like
themselves, what needs to be done is in
the quote from from President Obama is
to put more power in the hands of of the
experts.
So the intellectual temptation is to
say, look, we already know everything.
That's right. If only we also had the
power, all the power, everything would
be just fine. Yes. And what's wrong with
that view? Why isn't that a sensible
view? Well, they don't know everything.
They don't they don't know one/tenth of
everything. Uh, in fact, I I I argue
that they they probably don't know 1% of
the consequential knowledge in a
society. Consequential knowledge is a is
a is a a concept that runs through this
book. Explain that concept. Knowledge
whose presence or absence has
consequences. Serious consequences. I
mean, I was once in a plane that was
coming down for a landing in the Ithaca
airport. Uh and suddenly the pilot
gunned the motor and went up again
because someone in the control tower to
had reminded him that he hadn't lower
lowered his landing gear. So that was
consequential knowledge right yes I just
delighted that that person had had his
eyes open and his mind on his word. So
the notion here is that the kind of
knowledge, the kind of consequential
knowledge required to prove effective in
governing a nation of such as the United
States with the biggest economy in the
world, 300 million people, you can put
together quite a large group of
professors and they're still not going
to possess the knowledge that would
enable them to run General Motors, for
example, or to run the nation's health
care system, for example. Oh,
absolutely. Uh in fact one of the one of
the things that has happened all around
the world during the 20th century was
that all sorts of countries have tried
central planning. Now the guys who run
the central plan they usually have
advanced degrees from prestigious
institutions. They have mountains of
statistics uh sitting there and they
have all the experts in the country at
their beck and call. And yet when you
take the power out of their hands and
return it to the market, then all the
hundreds of millions of people who don't
have any of those things usually end up
with a higher rate of growth and a more
rapidly rapid decline in poverty because
consequential knowledge by its nature
tends to be diffused, widely diffused.
Yes. Yes.
This philosophy begins with a seductive
premise that socialism is morally
superior that it cares more about the
poor that it gives power to the people
but what it really gives is power to
politicians. Bernie Sanders once said I
think we should look to countries like
Denmark like Sweden and Norway and learn
what they have accomplished for their
working people. But what he fails to
mention whether through ignorance or
ideology is that these countries are not
socialist. They are capitalist countries
with large welfare states. They built
their wealth through free markets. Their
redistribution came later and even then
they've spent the last two decades
rolling it back. As I wrote in the
vision of the anointed, much of the
social vision of intellectuals is both
unrealistic and untested. Reality is
often shrugged off as somehow being less
important than the vision. Socialism
appeals to that vision. the utopia that
exists only in the minds of elites who
do not bear the consequences of being
wrong. Socialism's defenders on the
American left speak of free healthcare,
free college, and economic justice as if
repeating the word free enough times
will make scarcity vanish. Alexandria
Kaziocortez, for instance, has
championed the Green New Deal, a
document promising universal employment,
guaranteed income, and nationalized
energy infrastructure, all without a
single coherent cost estimate. But
economics is not about what sounds good,
is about
tradeoffs. There is no such thing as
free healthcare. You either pay for it
through higher taxes or degraded
services. In basically, economics, I
said the first lesson of economics is
scarcity. There's never enough of
anything to fully satisfy all those who
want it. The first lesson of politics is
to disregard the first lesson of
economics. And that's exactly what
politicians like Sanders and AOC do.
They offer what cannot be delivered
without consequences they never discuss.
Socialism thrives on envy. It is not
built on lifting up the poor, but on
tearing down the successful. Sanders
doesn't just argue that the rich should
pay more. He implies they got rich by
harming others. He once declared that
billionaires should not exist as if
wealth creation were a zero sum game.
This world view is toxic. In the quest
for cosmic justice, I warned that envy
was once considered one of the seven
deadly sins before it became one of the
most admired virtues under its new name,
social justice. The politics of
resentment fueled socialism not because
the system works, but because it targets
the system that does. One of the most
dangerous aspects of this socialist
resurgence is the sheer historical
ignorance of its advocates. They speak
glowingly of socialism as though it were
a new experiment. But socialism is not
new. It has been tried repeatedly and
failed catastrophically. The Soviet
Union, Mao, China, Cuba, uh Venezuela,
these are not anomalies. They are the
predictable outcomes of a system where
power is centralized and incentives are
distorted. Venezuela, once the richest
country in Latin America, was
transformed into a failed state by the
very policies Seniors and AOC
endorsizations, price controls, wage
controls, all led to hyperinflation,
food shortages, and mass poverty. And
yet, as I noted in intellectualism
society, the fatal attraction of
government power for intellectuals is
not just the prospect of being able to
shape policy, but the feeling of moral
superiority it gives them. That moral
superiority blinds them to the lessons
of history. Another reason Democrats
gravit gravitate toward socialism is the
belief in central planning. the notion
that bureaucrats in Washington can
allocate resources more efficiently than
the decentralized decisions of millions
of people in a market. But history shows
otherwise. Every plant economy has
produced a misallocation, inefficiency,
and ultimately stagnation. In contrast,
the free market, imperfect as it may be,
responds to supply, demand, prices, and
competition. It is self-correcting,
adaptable, and driven by information. As
I stated in knowledge and decisions, the
most basic question is not what is best,
but who shall decide what is best. The
socialist answer is always the same, the
state. And that answer should terrify
us. Socialism appeals to the young
because they have no memory of its
failures. College campuses are ground
zero for the spread of these ideas.
Often taught by professors who have
never worked in the real economy and who
view profit as exploitation rather than
productivity. Why? Because socialism
cloaks itself in compassion. But
compassion with other people's money is
not morality. It is the easiest virtue
to signal and the hardest one to
measure.
Now, in a conflict of visions, I
explained that the unconstrained vision
embodied by socialists assumes that
human nature is essentially good and
perfectable and that systemic problems
require systemic overhauls led by
enlightened elites. But this is fantasy.
Human nature is not perfectable and
systems designed on that premise
collapse under the weight of reality.
Socialist rhetoric like that of Sanders
and AOC divides the country into
villains and victims, the 1% and the
99%. But this narrative is dangerously
simplistic. The top 1% is not a static
group of robber barons. People move in
and out of income brackets throughout
their lives. A small business owner who
takes risks and succeeds is not the same
as a rent-seeking crony capitalist. But
the rhetoric makes no distinction. Why?
Because class warfare works. It
galvanizes support, distracts from
failure, and justifies government
expansion. But here's the truth. In
every socialist economy, the very class
warfare meant to empower the poor ends
up concentrating power in the hands of
the political elite. The poor get poorer
and the planners get richer. As I wrote
in the vision of the
anointed, the anointed do not merely
believe they know what is best. They
believe they must be given the power to
impose it.
and socialism is their
tool. Now ask yourself, are Sanders and
AOC truly trying to solve poverty or are
they trying to seize and centralize
power in the name of solving poverty?
Real solutions to poverty, economic
growth, education reform, job creation,
deregulation.
These don't require revolution. They
require
freedom. But socialism is not about
solving problems. It is about shifting
power from individuals to the state. And
once the state has that power, it never
gives it back. Socialism is not a future
vision. It is a recurring nightmare. It
has failed every time it has been tried.
Not because of poor implementation, but
because its core assumptions of our
human nature, incentives, and economics
are wrong. As I've often said, much of
the social history of the Western world
over the past three decades has involved
replacing what worked with what sounded
good. Democrats like Bernie Sanders and
Alexandria
Okasiocortez are not new thinkers. They
are the latest in a long line of
ideologues who trade in promises and
reap in power. And unless Americans
learn the real history, not the
sanitized slogans, we are doomed to
repeat the mistakes of the past.
Socialism is not compassion. It is
coercion. It is not justice. It is
jealousy. It is not progress. It is
regression. And the facts, history, and
logic are clear. If only we are willing
to look.
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