College Students Want Socialism But Not When It Comes To Their GPA

Campus Reform has come up with a lot of great videos in the past, but I think this might be one of their all-time best.
 
Campus Reform’s Cabot Phillips went to Florida International University to ask various students whether they preferred socialism or capitalism. To no one’s shock, many of them said they preferred socialism.
 
After a brief overview of what socialism is: a system where the rich are forced to give much of their money to people who are not as rich, Cabot posited the idea of utilizing a socialist system for grades.
 
He asked the students who preferred socialism if they wanted a similar system in their schools and their grades, where those who had high GPAs were forced to give a little bit of their grades to those who had worse GPAs.
 
And this is where 1) these kids were exposed as hypocrites and 2) some of these kids were actually exposed to be a little bit capitalistic, or at least meritocratic in their way of thinking.
 
“I’m all for helping, but I wouldn’t give some of my points… I’ve lost a lot of sleep so I don’t know if that would be fair,” answered one student. Another said: “I, like, study all day for my grades.”
 
Interestingly enough, one acknowledged that it’d be “kind of hypocritical for me to say no.”
 
When many said they would not be willing to sacrifice their GPAs for someone else, Cabot asked what the difference was between not being willing to sacrifice grades and not being willing to sacrifice wealth to spread it around to those who do not have as much.
 
Funny enough, one of them said: “You study for your grades and grades also reflect how much time you’ve spent studying.”
 
Yeah, that’s not really a good answer at all. In fact, that’s not a difference between working for your grades and working for your money. Students work hard to earn good grades. When they don’t work hard, their grades tend to suffer. The same principle applies to earning money.
 
One of the students mentioned that the difference was that rich people often inherit their wealth or use the stock market to get wealthy, not work for it, and that may be true in some cases, but not for the most part.
 
People like Donald Trump, who did get a $1 million head start from his father, had to work hard to turn that million into a billion. People like Howard Schultz had to start from the bottom. People like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs built their companies in their parents’ garage. People like Warren Buffet, who yes is mostly an investor, had to work hard to ensure the companies he invested in were working optimally as chairman of the board of directors.
 
To my mind, the only wealthy people that I can think of that inherited their wealth but did not outright work to get it are London Tipton from Disney’s “Suite Life of Zack and Cody” and Yusuf Amir from Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto”. And both are works of fiction.
 
That’s not to say people don’t inherit wealth. The Rockefellers are wealthy largely because of the work of their ancestors, but it also takes work to maintain and grow that wealth.
 
In any case, all of the interviewed students said that they believe they had worked hard to earn their grades and did not think it would be fair for the college or any entity to take away some of their grades to give to someone else, even someone who might not work hard for their grades.
 
Which is important to note considering the fact that AOC’s Green New Deal included the phrase “unwilling to work”. No one wants to give something to someone that is able but unwilling to work for that very thing.
 
One student actually said something really smart as well: “Then there’d be no point to having a GPA because then if everyone has the same then there’s not a metric… is it fair for everyone to have the same outcome or the same opportunity? For me, having the same opportunity is what is fair, not the same outcome. Because if I work harder than you and I get a better result then it is only fair that I get a better grade or get a better opportunity than you.”
 
I don’t know if the kid knows this, but that is an almost perfect explanation as to what CAPITALISM is.
 
I wholeheartedly agree with the guy’s argument here. There’d be no point in having a GPA if everyone is forced to have the same grade or have equal grades. One student cannot be allowed to have a higher GPA than another so there’s no point to having a GPA in the first place. By the same token, if people are forced to share their money, there’s no point to having a currency in the first place, and certainly no point in working for your money.
 
If someone else is going to give some of their money to you and they are obligated by law to do so, there’s no point in you working or the other person working for their money, if they are just going to be forced to give it to someone else.
 
And as far as opportunity goes, there’s a good reason America is called “The Land of Opportunity”. While that title has not been used an awful lot as of late, it still remains true, at least in theory. Capitalism gives everyone a fair shot, a fair opportunity to earn their wealth. A particular outcome is never guaranteed, just the opportunity to strive for a particular outcome.
 
There’s no more unfair and unequal form of an economic system than socialism. It takes from the rich, who largely earned their money, to give to those who have not earned that money or worked far less to earn money.
 
If you work hard for your money, you should be able to keep it. That’s the basic principle of capitalism. That’s meritocracy. That’s why I mentioned that this video exposes students’ more capitalistic tendencies, even if they say they prefer socialism.
 
The only reason they say they prefer socialism is because they don’t know what it truly is. They think it’s a system where the government forces the rich to pay for everything and everything is awesome because the rich can afford everything. Only half of that is what socialism actually does. But it doesn’t stop at just the rich. While I don’t have much time to go into too much detail about this, I will simply say that socialism is a system that destroys wealth and as a result, the threshold for what is considered rich gets lowered to the point where upper-middle class are considered rich. And then, middle class. And then lower-middle class. And pretty soon, you have an ever-growing government that requires other people’s money, but the well runs dry. After that, all you have left is a self-imploding government that has long ceased to be equal or fair.

How do I know this? Venezuela.
 
These kids prefer socialism over capitalism because they buy into the idea that capitalism is horrible, even though they live under such a system that lets them have all the amenities they take for granted, and that socialism is the great equalizer.
 
The problem is that while it does make everyone equal, it makes them equally miserable. There is no socialist utopia. It has failed every time it has been tried. And just because there are countries that are still afloat that employ socialism right now doesn’t make it a good system. Soviet Russia was pretty powerful and rich under communism until its own system collapsed because it ate itself away.
 
And while some might try and explain that the Soviet Union only collapsed because the U.S. forced it into a space race, I ask: why didn’t the U.S. collapse as well, then? If the only reason as to why the Soviet Union collapsed is the fact that the two countries were trying to outspend each other then why didn’t the U.S. also collapse? Because the capitalist system of economics CREATES wealth, whereas communism/socialism destroys it.
 
What allowed the Soviet Union to last as long as it did is the fact that they had the population to suck the money out of and an emigration system that made it pretty much an impossibility for people to leave. Why do you think we so often heard stories of people trying or successfully defecting from the Soviet Union or any other communist nation? They aren’t allowed to leave, so they have to escape.
 
And you want to know something funny? It is outright impossible to have full-on communism/socialism. Lenin tried that and it almost completely sank the new Soviet Union, so he had to allow for some privatization, such as private farming, in order to keep the Soviet Union afloat.
 
In other words, SOME capitalism is necessary in order for even a communist nation to survive. China is another example of this.
 
That’s because socialism and communism are so self-destructive, it is outright impossible to implement a completely communist system without risking almost immediate implosion.
 
But returning to these kids, once again I have to make the argument that what is necessary is to educate these kids because even they have a little bit of a capitalist in them. They just don’t know it. And by educate, I don’t mean sending them to college. These are COLLEGE kids and are clearly being indoctrinated, since that’s all college does in this day and age.
 
One can only hope that these kids reflect on this scenario of socialism with GPAs and realize that it’s at least equally as unfair (no pun intended) if not more unfair when applied to money.
 
Proverbs 1:5
“Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.”
 
And please make sure to check out our free weekly newsletter. As the name suggests, it is a newsletter that comes completely free of charge. What you get is a compilation of the week’s articles sent right into your inbox. So make sure to check it out today!
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.