On socialism

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Website owner:  James Miller

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On socialism

There are always a few exceptional people in any neighborhood, who, usually from a young age, demonstrate a greater tendency toward good sense and prudence than do most people. In their younger years they study hard in school and prepare themselves for some profession. Their good sense leads them in the direction of good habits and away from bad habits. Life usually rewards wisdom, prudence and good sense. People with prudence and good sense usually have certain character traits. They are diligent, hard working. They possess self-discipline and are perseverant. They are serious, curious, inquisitive, thoughtful, disciplined, energetic, active, always learning. While most people live from paycheck to paycheck, frittering money away on foolish expenditure and pleasure, never saving a penny, the prudent person figures out how to save some of his income and invest it. He becomes successful financially as well as in other ways. Just the natural mechanisms of life favor this kind of person. They reward him for his good sense, prudence and good character. More exactly, just what are these natural mechanisms of life that reward him? Mostly, they are the natural mechanisms of the free enterprise system, that natural system whose history goes back as far as man himself. The free enterprise system rewards hard work, diligence, thoughtfulness and intelligence. And it punishes laziness, imprudence, stupidity, ignorance and foolishness. It rewards good character and punishes bad character. It thus provides incentives. It provides incentives to each person to be diligent, knowledgeable, thoughtful and prudent. Now how do the incentives provided by the free enterprise system compare with the incentives provided by these socialistic type systems that have been dreamed up by egg-headed liberals? The socialistic type systems shield the lazy, imprudent, stupid, and foolish from the natural consequences of their own foolishness. They guarantee people the essentials of life regardless of their behavior. And what happens when you destroy disincentive for foolishness and irresponsible behavior in a population of people? You encourage irresponsible, foolish behavior. What happens when you encourage irresponsible, foolish behavior in some population of people? You increase the average cost of living for everyone. Irresponsible behavior costs everyone money. In addition, by paying everyone about the same no matter how much or how little they do, socialistic type systems give people no real incentive to really exert themselves. One must understand the following important truth: A person will work very hard if he has something to gain by it; if he has nothing to gain, he will not work very hard. Socialism gives people no real incentive to discover themselves, discover their powers, discover what they are capable of, to tax themselves; to develop themselves intellectually and otherwise. It kills ambition, kills dreams. It kills something very important inside. It gives people incentive to just be lazy, to not try. The population becomes infantile; like children. Communism has been tried in many countries and it just doesn’t work. And there are very good reasons why it doesn’t work. And when some system kills the incentive to work in all the citizens of a country, what do you thinks happens to the economy of that country?

Many people argue that it is not right that some people are very rich in a society while the masses are relatively poor. Well, the main reason the masses in the richer countries of the world never have anything is because they never save any money. They just don’t have that habit. They are fools. They spend all their money foolishly, squander it. They eat out at restaurants all the time, take expensive vacations, indulge all their appetites, squander their money on foolishness, then are jealous of those more prudent people around them who have lived frugally, saved and invested their money, and are now relatively wealthy. If they, themselves, had been prudent enough in their younger years to have lived frugally and saved and invested their money, they too would have ended up with some financial resources. That argument is really all about jealousy. It is the jealousy that the loser carries for the winner. The problem is that the foolish always vastly outnumber the wise, and in a democratic country like the United States, it is the masses who determine the political direction in which the country moves through their voting power. There are always unscrupulous politicians around who will play to the masses to secure power for themselves. They propose socialistic ideas of transferring wealth from the rich to the poor and the masses think these ideas are really great.

June 2016