Why I think Communism, Socialism and Liberalism cannot work

Master CraftsMon - Aired Monday, May 15, 2006 at about 11pm CST - Segment 2

Let's go back to the start of this program and I will try to get the answers to questions I have been asking for the last 24 shows, except I did not ask explicitly enough.

First let me talk about Communism. Why won't Communism work? Well, it can, assuming you want to live in a mud hut. If you want to live in a high tech society, Communism makes that impossible, because it quickly eliminates master craftsmen, people committed to excellence in their craft.

There was this guy named Conner in about 1830. He came over to the U.S. from Scotland with the idea of proving that Communism would work better than Capitalism. Yeah, Communism, predated Marx. Anyway. Conner gave speeches to the entire U.S. government when he arrived in Washington, D.C. He had to give his talk twice, because not all the Congressmen, members of the Supreme Court and the President could make it for the first one. Are you getting this? Conner was able to get the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches of the U.S. federal government to come and hear him speak. He made his case and went out to Ohio to set up a Communist utopia in a town that he had bought for the experiment.

The problem he had was that the master craftsmen wouldn't work for the same salary as the street sweepers. The best black smiths, window hangers, and whatnots just got tired of getting less than what they could get elsewhere and left town. Very quickly the town started to fall apart physically. Conner tried repeatedly to make the project work and it failed. After repeated failures, Conner gave up and went back to Scotland. His son ended up with the property and made a go of it using Capitalism. In short, when a master craftsman has an alternative, he doesn't stick around and allow Communists to exploit him.

What about the Soviet Union? That was a totally Communist country. Surely the master craftsmen would be required to stay around? Yep, they sure were, but the master craftsmen lost heart and stopped being the best. To be the best you have to have the best tools and resources to explore improvements in your trade. They couldn't get that in the Soviet Union. I mean, if you are a creative person and have to fight bureaucrats for every single nail, you just give up after a while. And that's what you saw in the Soviet Union, their tech base slowly degraded. They were just unable to keep up with the U.S. because their master craftsmen kept giving up and becoming second raters. By the third generation, the Soviet Union was a Third World country with a nuclear arsenal... that probably never would have worked.

What about Socialism? Surely the Europeans are living in a paradise. Nope, not by my standards. Their master craftsmen are slowly becoming second raters. Their tech base is degrading and they are finding it hard to simply keep things going. Socialism by and large can work, but it causes master craftsmen to give up after a while. I mean, to be the best you have to commit yourself to BEING the best. If you constantly see these lazy layabouts having a good time while you work hard, you slowly lose heart and become a second rater or worse decide that having fun is fantastic so you become a third rater. If you think Europe under Socialism is working, I draw your attention to the fact that few Europeans have won Nobel Prizes in last few years. Where is the innovation? In the arts? Yeah, great, but you can't keep up a high tech society with English majors.

Then there is American Liberalism. As far as I can tell Liberalism won't work, because it wipes out master craftsmen on many different fronts. First there is the family. Feminism has the ideal that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. Without a two parent family, it is difficult to get a master craftsman. Then there are the Gays. Their goal is to eliminate monogamy in marriage. It is almost impossible to keep a marriage going without sexual fidelity. And of course there is the Liberal creed that everything is relative. Pi is defined as about 3.1415. If you try saying that pi is 3.0 then buildings start falling down. Plus there is the emphasis in Liberalism on government funding of attempts at social justice. Under a totally Liberal controlled polity, your master craftsmen finally give up, because they just will not support people they perceives as lazy layabouts. In short, your tech base starts to degrade, slowly, admittedly, but things do indeed start falling apart. I draw your attention to Detroit. They ran out all the master craftsmen and the city is falling apart. And what about New Orleans? Each of these cities has been under Liberal rule for many years. If Liberalism was going to work, wouldn't you see indications that these two cities were more prosperous than places under Republican rule? Wouldn't you expect that the areas that have been under the Democratic Party to be more just, wouldn't you expect that poverty would be less? Wouldn't places where Democrats have had a chance to implement their agenda be much better places to live?

Show me. That's all I'm asking. If you can show me some cities in this country where philosophy of Liberalism has been implemented and social justice has been achieved, I would appreciate it. I have heard that some of the Northern cities have gotten things to go well under Liberalism, but there appears to be a net immigration from these cities to other parts of the country. I could be mistaken. I have also heard that certain of the West Coast cities have achieved a form of social justice, but, again, I could be mistaken.

In short, Communism, Socialism and Liberalism do not work. If they were going to work, they would have worked by now... somewhere. They cannot work in a high-tech society, because they degrade the tech base to the point that you are living on charity from other countries. Communism and Socialism have been tried in over 70 countries. Liberalism has been implemented in a large number of cities in this country. They have not produced good results. In fact, if you implement a Socialist agenda on a Capitalist state, your economy collapses pretty damned fast. I draw your attention to South Africa under Nelson Madela. I hasten to point out that I know the White South Africans were morally wrong, but you cannot dispute that their present economy is failing.

Ah, but people committed to Communism, Socialism and Liberalism perceive themselves to be more moral than me, because their philosophy is better than Capitalism. I say it is not, because of slavery. Yes, that's pretty harsh, but that's the way I look at it. Taxes are a form of conscription or involuntary servitude, when they are wasted. I say that you waste taxes when you get no results OR worse when the governmental solution makes the social problem bigger. I accept that there has to be some conscription in a society, but I refuse to say that something is moral, if it achieves no real results.

Let's take a simple example. I was on the local Head Start board of directors for a while. The goal of Head Start is to cut down on the number of at risk kids that drop out of school before they graduate from high school. It doesn't work. There are numerous studies that show kids who were in Head Start are just as likely to drop out of school as those who were not. Why am I paying taxes to support a program that has failed? Ah, the answer from Liberals is that, if we did nothing it would be worse. That's what gets me. The program has failed. All the literature that I have seen, shows that Head Start doesn't affect anything past the 6th grade. If it was up to me, I would privatize Head Start and let volunteers handle the kids. You see, there are some facets of Head Start I agree with, but it should be done with volunteers, not paid staff. Right now too many people involved in Head Start have to have masters degrees to work in the project. Someone with a masters degree gets paid more than someone who does not. Why should I pay someone with a masters degree to do a job that can be done just as well by someone who does not have a masters degree?

If you are going to conscript me to do something, then you best know that what you are doing will work OR are pretty sure it will work. Why in the world should you conscript me to do something, if you have evidence that the solution achieves no results? By my standards that is a form of slavery. What part of "I am a Republican and I am against slavery." do you not understand?

What I want you to do is rebut what I have said above. I want you to go out to my blog and make comments about this set of ideas, because I perceive that social activism from the Left has failed. I perceive that social activism from the Right is a better solution, because the way I want to attack problems is volunteerism. I do not believe that the conscription method works.