First, what “problems” is it supposed to solve?
Second, what has socialism’s history been when it comes to solving the supposed “problems”?
Ironically, many of the problems that socialism is supposed to cure – inequality, oppression, poverty, poor health, privation, and joblessness – are worse under socialism. While some reading this may ask me how I know this, my answer is “Look at its history”.
No one can point at any socialist country or society and say “See, socialism works! Look how prosperous, how happy, how healthy, how well housed the people here are!” In over 400 years, socialism has never prospered. While some may try to use countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Norway as examples of socialist success, those countries will tell you they aren’t socialist states. Rather, they are welfare states because they do not and haven’t controlled their economies or the means of production like socialist states do. They have incorporated some aspects of socialism such as cradle to grave health care, welfare benefits, free college education, and free elderly care, those welfare states are paring back the benefits they have provided their citizens because their system isn’t sustainable. They are running out of other people’s money and they have realized they can’t continue as they have. They’re going broke.
But wait! There’s more!
Multiple forms of socialism, from hard Stalinism to European redistribution, continue to fail.Yet many in our country are clamoring to emulate those failed socialist states because they see capitalism as the cause of all the world’s ills when in fact it has done more to raise people out of poverty across the world than any other economic system, ever. But apparently that isn’t enough for some folks. They figure they’re owed more. But there’s more to it than that.
Russia and China are still struggling with the legacy of genocidal communism. Eastern Europe still suffers after decades of Soviet-imposed socialist chaos.
Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Venezuela are unfree, poor and failed states. Baathism -- a synonym for pan-Arabic socialism -- ruined the postwar Middle East.
The soft-socialist European Union countries are stagnant and mostly dependent on the U.S. military for their protection.
In contrast, current American deregulation, tax cuts and incentives, and record energy production have given the United States the strongest economy in the world.
Add up a lost generation of woke and broke college graduates, waves of impoverished immigrants without much knowledge of American economic traditions, wealthy advocates of boutique socialism and asleep-at-the-wheel Republicans, and it becomes clear why historically destructive socialism is suddenly seen as cool.We’ve already seen that outcome recently, that example being the once prosperous and wealthy nation of Venezuela. It was once the richest nation in South America. It has larger proven oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. It is now the poorest nation in South America. Its oil infrastructure has fallen apart and is capable of pumping only a small fraction of the oil it once could. Its electrical grid is barely functional, and blackouts are a regular event. There’s no work because there are no raw materials available, there’s no reliable electrical supply, and no motor fuels.
Regrettably, sometimes the naive and disaffected must relearn that their pie-in-the sky socialist medicine is far worse than the perceived malady of inequality.
And unfortunately, when socialists gain power, they don't destroy just themselves. They usually take everyone else down with them as well.
There’s little food because farmers either can’t get seed, get fuel for their farm equipment, or they don’t have the money to pay for those things when they are available because the socialist government set food prices so low that farmers earn so little, they can’t pay for what they used to grow their crops. There are no medical supplies for hospitals. All of this can be attributed to the socialism. It is the socialism the people of Venezuela voted for because they thought it would solve all of the problems they thought they had.
And now we have ill-educated debt-ridden spoiled children thinking that the answer to the problems of their own making is to try socialism again. It won’t work. It hasn’t worked. It will never work. But just like any infectious disease, every time we think it’s under control and close to eradication, it re-emerges in a new place, infecting the unwary and, in some cases, becoming virulent and killing economies, freedoms, and people.