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5.25 Socialism
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings.
The
inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Winston
Churchill, at the House of Commons, October 22, 1945
Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel
of envy
Winston Churchill in a
speech he gave in Perth, Scotland, on May 28, 1948
“Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group —
whether to a
race, class, or state does not matter.”
(from essays in The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand)
“The smallest minority on earth is the individual.
Those who deny individual
rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”
(often cited from Rand’s political essays)
One idea of socialism is everyone should share and have the same amount of everything. This video shows woke students who are for socialism unless they have to share their grade point average.
Mamdani at the time of my writing this paragraph (June 2025) just won the Democrat primary election in New York City. He is a socialist. He won by promising free stuff. He promised free public transportation, free transgender surgeries, free child care, cheaper groceries in government run stores, and a freeze on rent increases and more. Where would he get the money? He'd tax businesses and the rich and defund the police.
This has been tried before. Jeffrey Ludwig, in an article in the American Thinker wrote:
I heard many stories about obtaining food in the USSR under communism where all the grocery stores and butcher shops were government-owned. Students regaled me with stories of how family members would have to line up for hours at butcher shops to obtain even one chicken. Furthermore, to even be certain that a decent chicken awaited the customer after a long wait, bribes had to be paid ahead of time to those running the shops. The range of items for sale was quite limited. There was a pathetic lack of choice in the former USSR, a country big on promises but weak on delivery.
That's because when the government offers free or cheap stuff it has to get the money from somewhere for the free stuff and if it can't get the money there isn't enough free stuff.
Ben Shapiro talks about what happened when rent freezes were tried in the video below.
Mandani's policies have been tried and have made things worse. On reason is because the rich leave and you don't have enough of a tax base to tax to death to pay for goodies like free transportation and all those other free goodies your promised. In fact you have to raise the cost of buses if the wealthy tax base that subsidizes it disappears. If you don't have enough money you can't pay people to collect garbage, you don't have the money to repair broken buses or to pay for as many bus drivers. If you defund the police you get more crime. Next time you have to wait for a bus you'll have to wait a long time and you might be robbed before it shows up. He promises to increase the minimum wage. The results will be fewer jobs and higher costs and businesses going under. Socialists don't like businesses because businesses are capitalist and they hate capitalism.
Socialism was tried in China. Mao offered free stuff just like Mandani and the result was terrible.
In the video below a Russian woman Rebekkah Koffler talks about what's wrong with socialism. One of the things she says is "When everything is free, nothing is available". Why is that? Price controls are a way of making things more free and they result in less goods being available. Why is that? Price controls are discussed in another lesson this web site that you can see by clicking here.
Additional Links:
I Lived Zohran Mamdani's Socialist Dream
Bless our billionaires — the wealth they create makes us ALL richer
"This is a DEATH Cult!" - Glenn Beck's WARNING after Zohran Mamdani's Rapid Rise
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