Why socialism, liberalism and progressivism always fails

One of the biggests myths that liberals believe is that there's only so much money to go around. They believe that people who make lots of money do so at the expense of others. This explains why rich people are so often referred to as "greedy" and "selfish" and "materialistic" by the left.  And it's so not true.

Now, surely, in some cases it might be true.  But in most cases, just because someone is well off does not make them greedy.

This also explains why the left constantly barrages people who succeed.  They do not like it when companies make profits.  Instead, they believe any money over what is needed to make a living should be spread out among all the other people equally.

This explains why they want taxes for the rich and not for the middle class and poor.  They want to punish those who succeed by taking the money they worked so hard to earn and doling it out to the poor.  In other words, they believe they know how to spend other people's money better than they do.

Actually, liberals believe that, left to their own devices, that people who succeed are naturally greedy, selfish, and materialistic; that they will naturally put themselves before the state, And, they believe, this is wrong.

This is why they hate capitalism so much, because capitalistic societies create opportunities for the few to benefit off the many, or so they falsely believe.

A perfect example to help me make my point is Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments.  He read somewhere that $70,000 was an ideal salary.  If you earn this salary you can have a nice house and car and have plenty of money left over to live a good life.  There's no need to make more than that.

Here's a guy who made over a million a year.  He decided to give himself a huge pay cut to $70,000 a year, and he gave this same salary to all his workers.  In other words, he decided, as so many on the left do, that it's unfair that one person makes millions of dollars while all the people who are the workers make so much less.  So he redistributed the money among all who work for him.

Guess what?  This happened back in April.  Not even four months later he announced that it was an utter failure. He had people who worked for the company for many years, were very loyal to the company, and they were upset that people who were newly hired were making as much as they were. Some of them -- some of his best employees -- quit.  It was a devastating blow to his company.

When you dole out money equally you expect that every person will do an equal amount of work.  In the ideal world, this might happen.  But in the real world this is impossible.  In the real world you are always going to have people say: "I'm going to make $70,000 no matter what I do, so I'm not going to go out of my way to do anything."

Why did this system fail? Because it assumes that everyone is equal.  Dan Price assumed that if everyone else made the same money he did that they would have the same passion that he does.  He believed the liberal myth that equality would bring fairness and happiness.  And he was wrong.

The fallacy here is that if everyone was equal, if everyone made the same amount of money, that everyone would do the same amount of work, and everyone would be equally happy.  This is the euphoria liberals think they can create. This is the biggest myth of liberalism that exists out there.

Sure, in their ideal world everyone is equal.  But in the real world people know that no two people are alike.  We are all unique. We all have our own goals, desires, and ambitions.  Some of us naturally work harder than others.  Some of us are early to work every day, and others are late no matter how hard they try.

Not only that, contrary to what the left tries to force on us, no one wants to be the same as someone else. We all yearn to be individuals; we all yearn to be unique.  Surely I might want to be like my dad, and I might want to be like the CEO running my company, or I might like to emulate one of my better coworkers.  Still, I don't want to be considered the same as everyone else. We all want to be unique.  We all want to be missed when we are gone because no one else can do what we do.

That reminds me of a sign I saw in the nursing report room a while back: "No one notices what you do until you are gone."  This means that when you are no longer here, people realize how valuable you were.  All these years, for instance, they just assumed the storage room miraculously was stocked every day.  Now that you aren't around they see that it was you, all along, who stocked.

When my grandma passed away, the general consensus among us grandkids was that this was a woman who could never be replaced. If you are healthy psychologically, then you are special to the world in this way too. You cannot be replaced.  You are unique, You are an individual.  You don't want to be lumped in with a bunch of slackers, half-baked, half-caring people. You want to be thought of as the cream of the crop, and you can't be if everybody's making 70 grand.

Worded another way, if we all make the same income(a so called fair wage), and we all have the same healthcare, and we all have the same education, and we all have the same everything else, then we are nothing more than sheep.  We are herded by the great big Sheppard who lives in Washington D.C. who goes by the name of Uncle Sam.

The problem with this analogy is people are not sheep.  We all yearn to be unique We all yearn to be special. We all yearn to offer some special gift. We all offer a special gift. If everyone is the same, then we are no longer needed. To assume we are all the same is to assume we are all easily replaceable, and that goes against nature

It is for this reason that liberalism, progressivism, socialism, Lenonism, Marxism... always fails.

There are many people in this world that are so special that they will never be replaced.  This is human nature.  We are not the same, and cannot be treated the same. So any attempt to make us the same assumes that we all produce the same, and that's simply not true. It's human nature. To try to perfect human nature will always lead to chaos.

And that's exactly what happened at Gravity Payments after Dan Price decided to give everyone who worked for the company the same wage of $70,000.  Because there are so many different levels of talent and ability, the system set in place never had a chance. It was socialism pure and simple. Everyone was treated the same. Nobody was considered more important than anyone else. They are interchangeable. When one person retires or quits or dies, another can simply fit in to fill the empty pair of shoes, or so the

Marxist assumes.  Such a system is doomed to fail no matter how many times it is tried.Sure it might sound good and make you feel good, but it never works. It has never worked.

The main problem with socialism is best summed up by Rush Limbaugh:

The main policy or main flaw with socialism side from run out of somebody else's money at some point is that we're not the same and we are not equal. There is no such thing as fairness. Fairness is always arbitrary depending on who has the power to define it, and there certainly is no equality. There's equality of opportunity, equality of chance, equality before the law, but these people talk about equality in terms of outcomes, and there's no such thing.

You put a system of socialism in place where you have equality of outcome, and you're always gonna have some renegades, some entrepreneurs who are gonna say, "Screw this," and they're gonna bust out, and they're gonna do what they do, and they're not going to be shackled by silly rules like this. And then you have, on the other end of it, people who are gonna say, "I'm gonna get 70 grand a year, man, and I don't have to do anything special? I just have to show up?" and that's all they're gonna do. Because slackers are everywhere.

If you're not going to be compensated or rewarded for merit-based behavior, then there's no reason to be concerned about merit-based behavior. So that goes out the window, too.

Why did Dan Price's system fail? Because it was pure, unadulterated socialism. Call it liberalism or progressivism or whatever you want, it has failed every single time it has been tried. Yet because it smells good and sounds good, the best and brightest among us will continue to fall for it.

Further reading:

• Articulating Ideas: Idealism versus Realism
• Articulating Ideas: What is Fascism?
• Washington Times: Dan Price, Seattle CEO Who Set Company Minimum Wage at $70K, Now Struggles to Make Ends Meet
• Hot Air: CEO Who Raised Workers’ Minimum Pay to $70K Hits Predictable Problems
• National Review: It Turns Out That Equality Can Feel a Lot Like Unfairness
• Rush Limbaugh: CEO Who Made $70K His Company's Minimum Wage Admits It's a Disaster