https://mises.org/mises-wire/socialism-always-fails —
"…Three years ago, I wrote “The End of Socialists is Socialism, Not Prosperity,” and this article follows some of the same themes. In that article, I argued that socialists do not necessarily believe that socialism produces better economic outcomes than capitalism—indeed, one would have to be willfully blind to fail to recognize the differences—but that socialists believe it doesn’t matter. Socialism is a moral imperative, and the only thing holding back the implementation of this system in the USA has been the failure of socialists to present a plausible alternative—something that socialists claim now is being done…"
Posted by Anenome5
3 Comments
Unfortunately it never fails until AFTER it kills a whole shit ton of people.
The original argument for socialism was that the scientific management of the economy would yeild vastly superior outcomes to the relative anarchistic functions of the free market.
It is a fatal conceit; The belief that everybody in the world is a idiot except the expert beuacrats that spent years in study.
This, of course, is demonstratively false. It has been proven through experience.
So now socialists don’t even bother. They know it is a losing argument.
Now the argument is that socialism is compasionate and fair were as the relative anarchistic functions of the free market is unfair and source of great social ill.
Again it is the same fatal conceit; everybody except expert beaucrats that spent years studying social sciences are greedy and selfish.
That’s a really interesting view of socialism, that it’s a movement primarily focused on the survival of the movement itself, not necessarily end goal that its narrative promotes. Is that an accurate representation?
Now, I can’t help but look at socialism from a memetic point of view. Maybe the idea of socialism is prevalent because the narrative is more effective at self propagation than competing ideas.