24 January 2024
Dr. Ben Powell: Socialism Sucks
In the lecture video by Dr. Ben Powell, he discusses what socialism is by definition, and the effects that it has. Dr. Powell begins his video by stating that socialism is coming back into popularity in society. With this, he explains that the common understanding of what socialism is with ideals such as favoring equality or ending oppression isn’t the actual definition. The definition he gives is “abolishing private property in the major factors of production, and replacing it with something in the form of collective ownership and/or control” and states that basically, “socialism means getting rid of entrepreneurs” (4:59). The difference is direct and indirect use, which is what Dr. Powell gets into in his tour of the world, discussing how it has failed in different places and why the community-based, direct commodity use, fails.
In Venezuela, he describes their poverty as “Starving Socialism”. Dr. Powell shows how the economy is one that can not feed itself. States that he saw people who would have to resort to selling their own hair for food and going across the bridge to Colombia to buy any basic necessities that they could. He explains that with socialism, and the idea to produce solely for use rather than the economy, creates a lack of incentive and consumer demand among people (31:00). That the lack of desire and driving force to produce, has the effect of staunching production. This also creates a stagnant area of products, where there is this idea of “Why do we need seventeen deodorants? We only need one.”
This idea is inherently flawed, as Dr. Powell also points out because it has an idea that you yourself are the standard for everything. You only need one deodorant that you like, but there are sixteen other people that have their own deodorant they like which will increase the consumption of the product at large. The idea of socialism keeping things the same based on one singular experience makes consumerism drop and creates a lifestyle that's bland and one that ultimately doesn’t continue to cycle money through the economy.
He also goes into talking about what he calls “dark socialism” in Korea. He uses this to describe the economic development in lights, and how South Korea is lit up while North Korea is completely dark. He shows that you have no light during the night there, which is indicative of third-world countries. He explains how this lack of lights at night is a “discontinuity in development” (39:10) because you can see the stark difference just by looking across the river. He then goes straight into China’s “fake socialism” and claims that it is actually a capitalistic society because you can clearly see all of the entrepreneurs that are in China. He goes into discussing how this change from socialism to capitalism actually brought thousands of people out of poverty and is understated locally.
He talks about Georgia, and how they have something he calls “new capitalism”. In this, he explains how they became independent from the fall of the soviet union, yet after that, there was basically no economic reform in Georgia until they hit and had a radical reform after about fourteen years. In their radical reform, they hired a new president and had a huge cut in government. All of this made it to where Georgia was ranked as having no economic freedom to now being in the top ten in the world for economic freedom.
Then he ends by talking about the USSA, where he talks about the young people that he met who have a poor understanding of what they are actually asking for when they say they want a socialist society. He says in his presentation that there are things in the United States that need reform and need to be changed and fixed. Yet he believes that the problems that fall typically under the realm of social justice issues are all issues that can’t or won't be fixed by implementing a socialist society. He says that it isn’t about equality in the sense that people believe it to be but rather it is government ownership for the means of production. He says that rather they need to be fixed by policy and civil society (51:00). By idealizing socialism and holding on to the belief that it will fit all of these social justice issues, is ignoring the host of problems that will come from implementing socialism.
The main issue with the controversy in socialism and if the United States should or shouldn’t adopt this way of society, is a lack of clear definition. Dr. Powell clearly stated throughout his presentation that the understanding of what socialism is is diluted into an idealistic perfect universe. When asked about facets of socialism, such as abolishing private property, he says that he was met with people saying that they don’t “think of socialism like that”. As if they can claim socialism is a necessary solution, yet only take the parts that they want and ignore the rest. Dr. Powell explains that instead of just saying no as an end-all-be-all, he wants to emphasize that we as a society need to create different solutions.