SOCIALISM EVENTUALLY FAILS EVERYWHERE IT IS TRIED. SO WHY DO PEOPLE STILL WANT IT?
Here is an idea. How about steem be divided equally at the end of each day? It does not matter if you make a post or not, or even how good your post is – we all get the same amount of steem placed into our accounts. That way we are all equal, we all get a piece. Sounds good right?
Edited in as 
'Everyone posts on steemit and people vote to award steem to the best posts. Then at the end of the day, the people who received more steem will have it taken out of their accounts and placed among the rest so that everyone ends up with an equal amount.'
What? You don’t like that idea?
How about we form groups of up to 50 steemians, who then write posts and at the end of the day whatever the group made gets divided equally amongst the members. Each group has a leader that can kick out or invite anyone of their choosing. Again, each member gets the same amount, it doesn’t matter if they posted or not or if their post even made any steem.
Better idea?
How about we leave it like it is, and what you make is what you keep. If you don’t do anything to make steem you don’t get any. If you make a killer post and get $400 then you get to keep that as well.
Good enough?
What I have described in a sense is socialism, tribalism, and capitalism. How do you think steemit would be doing under each of these models? Which would have the best content? Which would have the most active users?
I would think that the socialist model would have the most users. As for the best content? Probably capitalism, but certain tribes could be doing well – just not all of them. I would definitely say that the steemit socialism model would have the worst content of all, there would be no reason to work hard to create good content, and we see this in countries that follow that path.
SO WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP ADVOCATING FOR SOCIALISM?
In 2012 an experiment was conducted in which groups of 8 isolated and anonymous people gathered resources in a virtual game. Some resources were scarce (high value - HV) and some were more common (low value - LV). Participants quickly realized that they needed to share the HV resources when they obtained it because much of the time they would not find any. LV resources were shared less often because they were more readily obtained and the key limiting factor was how hard you worked for them.
This virtual game with people from modern society closely resembles an actual study of a primitive tribe.
Compare that to a harder to acquire resource like meat, which takes luck as well as skill. 90% of the meat was shared outside of the family.
Even a highly skilled hunter could return without a catch, Ache hunters returned with meat 43.5% of the time. So to even it out, they shared what meat they obtained so that on bad days they could still have some. While common plants were everywhere, so it was expected that you go and obtain it yourself.
HOW DOES THIS RELATE TO SOCIETY TODAY?
In this study Danes and Americans (approximately 1,000 from each country) were asked whether they supported giving welfare to 3 individuals. The Danes are known for socialism, while Americans are known to oppose most forms of welfare. Here is what they were asked.
1: A man on welfare. (no additional information)
2: A man on welfare that lost his job due to injury, but is actively seeking new employment.
3: A man on welfare who is lazy and never looks for a job.
For two cultures supposedly on opposite ends of the welfare debate, the results are surprisingly close. Both countries give more support towards the man who lost his job but is looking for a new one, and both withdrew that support for the lazy man. This study showed that support for welfare is similar and not brought on by fundamental differences.
This can be linked back to our evolutionary past as hunter-gatherers. If one hunter was injured and couldn’t hunt for a while we didn’t hold it against him and continued to give him his share of the food. While the lazy man was shunned and probably expelled from the group if there was no other reason to keep him around.
As a species we tend to not help those that would cheat the system, and so have evolved ‘anti-cheat’ detection. But that detection is worthless in a large society where we have no power to stop our resources being given to the cheats. And therein lies the fundamental problem of socialism today.
It does not and cannot work past the tribe level of society. The cheats can just hide in the system and benefits without reciprocity. Others will see this and have no power to stop it, so after time many will just give up as well – or at least not try hard since it is just being given to the cheats.
Politicians know how to use what is known as ‘romantic socialism’, an idea that harkens back to our evolutionary past of close family and small bands of kin. That you can give to everyone and in return they will give something back to you. They can play those feelings on millions of more empathetic people and sell the idea of socialism to the masses. Almost 100% of politicians that play this card just use those feelings to get into power – like Hugo Chavez.
Nobel prize winning economist and globalist Joseph Stiglitz said in 2007:
"Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appears to have had success in bringing health and education to the people in the poor neighborhoods of Caracas, to those who previously saw few benefits of the countries oil wealth."
Professor of Linguistics at MIT Noam Chomsky said in 2009:
"I write about peace and criticise the barriers to peace; that's easy. What's harder is to create a better world and what's so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created."
Former president Jimmy Carter said about Chavez:
"We came to know a man who expressed a vision to bring profound changes to his country to benefit especially those people who had felt neglected and marginalized. Although we have not agreed with all of the methods followed by his government, we have never doubted Hugo Chavez's commitment to improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen."
Apparently that commitment stops when you can steal untold millions from those same people you say you are helping. There is little doubt now that Venezuela only rode a nice path of increasing oil prices. Now we see what was really beneath that pretty surface that all these celebrities and ‘highly educated’ people praised, and it ain’t pretty.
If Chavez truly believed the bullshit he was saying he wouldn’t have lived in palaces, he would have lived like Jose Mujica, the former president or Uruguay. Mujica was a former leftist guerilla fighter, similar to Chavez, but he lived simply and gave 90% of his salary to charity.
Venezuela now lacks the basics to keep power on or feed the population. It is the murder capital of the world. Are the people better off now? You be the judge, there are many here that post from Venezuela – I will let them tell the story.
I mention Venezuela because it is currently undergoing the end game of socialism and gives us many fresh examples. Once a country becomes socialist everything can seem great for a while, but like someone running up their credit cards, eventually the bill comes due. The game really only comes down to how rich you were before it all started, because once that money is gone the façade falls apart.
WHY ARE SO MANY ‘HIGHLY EDUCATED’ PEOPLE SOCIALISTS?
Many ‘highly educated’ people seem to think socialism is the best form of government. Can we remember the praise for Venezuela and its socialist government?
Believers in capitalism are using their education and skills to make a living, they are too busy to talk about how capitalism works. Preachers of socialism, on the other hand, can be found in many universities where they can spend their days changing minds. It becomes all one sided, socialism good capitalism bad, as there are not many to stick up for capitalism and if they do it is probably a new student and the professor has done it so many times before they have the perfect counters to any argument – well at least those counters sound perfect if you don’t think about it too hard.
The market controls itself, there is no need to place someone in charge of capitalism. These socialist believers hate this unplanned, spontaneous order – it is anarchy. If everything works itself out, how can they make their opinions heard? They need problems to happen so the people think they need rulers. They need a system that is controllable so they will have a position to be looked up to and listened to, but most of all be in charge of it all.
Since no one can manage an economy with the millions of details that normally just happen, it naturally starts to fall apart under socialism. But they believe socialism can’t be the wrong idea, so these things that go wrong must be because someone is attacking the system! A scapegoat must be found, socialism is perfect! Again, you just have to look to Venezuela today to see such things in action.
The left sees capitalism as unfair because it results in different outcomes. The right sees socialism as rewarding failure and punishing success. The left wants equality of the outcome, while the other sides only see the need for equality of opportunity.
You see, under capitalism you have the liberty to give your share to whomever you think needs it, this is called charity. Under socialism you are forced to give up what you worked for to make everything equal, this is called theft.
"A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. And a society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality, but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other kind of system that has ever been developed." - Milton Friedman
Socialism may work in small groups where people that abuse the system can be shamed. When you hand over a share to someone and can think to yourself: “Is this a person who is motivated to give something back to me and society?” But it cannot work in a society where the takers and cheats can be hidden behind a wall of governmental bureaucracy.
Socialism is the worst scaling form of government in existence. It just does not work past a society of a certain size, and I believe that size is a society that can police itself – where everyone knows one another. Now if only university professors could grasp this fact.
So until something that works better than capitalism comes along, you will find me firmly entrenched on its side and the side of liberty.
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